


not just a girl but a work of art

by lionheartedgirl



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Caroline-centric, F/M, Gen, Heroine Big Bang, Multi, Sexual References, caroline/ocs, character deaths (semi-minor), illusions to caroline/elijah, mostly past!caroline/stefan, past dark! caroline/klaus, typical show level vampire violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/pseuds/lionheartedgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Klaus's promise to stay away from Caroline, from Mystic Falls had been a lie hidden in the truth. He had never offered freedom, at most he offered slow suffocation, his hand so gentle she would barely feel the weight of it until it was too late. Now, Caroline has spent years running. Terrified of what happens when Klaus finally catches her, becoming new shells of herself everytime she runs. But now new Originals seem to be nipping at her heels and she's tired of running and scared of who she's becoming, of what she's becoming, scared of the strangers she sees when she looks in the mirror.</i> </p><p>(AU Mid-S5 after Katherine dies and goes from there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	not just a girl but a work of art

It begins when she’s in New York. 

Caroline had tired of Europe, of the loneliness and echoes it brought with it, and Bonnie was getting older, getting tired, and Caroline wanted to be close for when the inevitable came. 

New York made more sense than California, though she preferred the sun. 

(The sunlight had always seemed safer to her, like it could chase away any and all monsters.)

She was back in one of her going to college phases, wanting a taste of normality and human life again. It was tainted by compulsion and blood bags and lies about where she came from, about her last name, about all the people she had left behind. But it was almost normal when she squinted her eyes. 

She met James in one of her business classes. He was cute and his family was wealthy and he took her to events where she was plied with champagne and he showed her off on his arm like he had won a prize. 

It wasn’t serious. It was never serious with anyone anymore. But the sex was good and his smile reminded her of Stefan’s and he bought her gifts for no other reason than he could. 

Her life was going good. 

She should have known it would fall apart. 

 

\--

 

“You don’t like it do you?” James asks as she squints at the painting in front of them. 

They were at an art gallery opening; his parents having donated almost half of the collection showing, he was expected to make an appearance. Caroline thinks they’re in the antiques business but she’s not quite sure. James is majoring in Art History and minoring in business and his father has plans for him to take over the family business, but Caroline tunes him out sometimes when he talks about his family. 

She’s petty and doesn’t have a family of her own anymore. She’s petty and sometimes doesn’t want anyone else to get to have one either. 

“No, I just—” Caroline tilts her head like maybe that will help. “I’m just…confused? I mean it’s just one color. Isn’t art supposed to be more than one color?”

“You’re overthinking it.” He says with a laugh, “You’re supposed to feel art, not think about it.” 

“Maybe I just need more champagne and then it’ll make more sense.” She smiles holding up her empty glass. 

He shakes his head at her fondly, “I swear you drink more than I do but you never seem to feel it.” 

Caroline just shrugs, because it’s the truth, vampire metabolism does that, but she can’t say that out loud. James is fun. Their whole relationship is about having fun and that means no talks about vampires or blood or monsters of the night.

And it’s not really lying if he never asks, right? It’s just pretending.

Caroline has always been good at pretending. 

“Come on,” James says taking her hand in his, “My parents should be by the bar anyways. They want to say hello.” 

His mother isn’t hard to find. Lillian is beautiful and statuesque, with flowing dark hair down her back. She looks ten years younger than she is, no vampire blood required. People flock to her, and when Caroline really has had too much to drink, she thinks she is everything Elena would be if she was allowed to live pass the age of eighteen. 

Lillian is talking with a group of people when they find her; a man with dark hair to her right and a group of women crowding further around her, taking up the gaps and spaces she allows. This event isn’t Lillian’s but one would think it was by looking at her, by the court she held. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” James says, his good breeding and charm coming out in full force as he eases them into the circle and taking other people’s places, “We just wanted to say hello to my mother.” 

“Sweetheart, I’m so glad you both came.” She says kissing his cheek and pulling them both closer to her, “Everyone you know my son James and this is his beautiful girlfriend Caroline.” 

Lillian didn’t hate her, but she didn’t love Caroline either. She always introduced her as beautiful, a compliment yes, but a statement of her staying power. Lillian didn’t think she would last. 

(Caroline knew she was right.) 

Caroline smiles at the other women, who looked older than her but weren’t, before her eyes settle on the man across from her. 

_“Elijah.”_

It came out breathy, surprise and fear so mixed together that it becomes something else entirely. Made his name sound like a plea that no one else would understand. A plea that maybe, _maybe_ , this was just a dream and she would wake up, her ears ringing and her heart thumping against her chest but with no Originals in sight. 

“You know Mr. Mikaelson?” Lillian asks, her eyes are sharp because she cares about her son too much (suffocates him with how much she cares, she remembers James saying), and because girls like Caroline aren’t supposed to know men like Elijah. 

On that Lillian and Caroline both very much agree. 

“Caroline and my sister attended the same school,” Elijah doesn’t miss a beat. “I believe they were on the cheerleading squad together.” 

He doesn’t seem surprised to see her, doesn’t seem startled or confused. He is as always calm and collected. 

“Cheerleader?” James smiles, pulling her a little closer. “You never told me about that.” 

Calm doesn’t make her safe. A calming smile is what every person Elijah had ever killed had seen right before they died. Calm is just another word for dangerous. 

All words translate into dangerous when you repeat them too much and for too long; Caroline knows this. 

“Caroline was the head cheerleader, if I recall correctly.” Elijah says, inclining his head towards her. “Rebekah did covet the position so.” 

“Where is Rebekah?” Caroline asks. She’s smiling too, years of practice standing in front of the mirror making it seem convincing, and even James with his hands on her waist hasn’t noticed the way she’s tensed up, ready to run. 

Elijah has. She knows he has. A predator can always sense its prey’s fear. She knows this because after all these years she’s become more predator than prey, but not now. Not facing down Elijah Mikaelson and his impassive eyes. 

When facing down an Original you are always the prey; Caroline knows this too. 

“Sadly, I’m alone tonight.” Elijah says. 

Caroline nods, but does not let out a sigh of relief. 

“That’s too bad.” She lies instead.

 

\--

 

She tells James that all the champagne had gone to her head, had given her a headache, and he sees her home, no questions asked. 

Well almost no questions. He pesters her with questions about her cheerleading days and if she still has her uniform, pressing kisses against her neck as the chauffer drives. But he lets her go up to her apartment alone, doesn’t press to know how she knew Elijah, or to follow her upstairs. 

He’s the perfect no strings boyfriend she’s wanted for a long time, had searched countries and continents to find. She think she might miss him a little once she’s gone and that was never supposed to be part of the plan. 

(She’ll get over it of course, she always does, but she thinks in the first few days she’ll miss him. Until he gets drowned out with memories and fears of other things more important.) 

Caroline waves at the doorman when she arrives, compelled already to never disclose who she is, what she looks like, or what apartment she lives in, and heads upstairs. 

She almost expects to see Klaus when she walks in. _Does_ expect it really. Some part of her sure this was always the plan, that Elijah’s appearance couldn’t be coincidence and instead had to be a part of something bigger. 

A warning shot or the Banshee’s cry before Klaus appeared before her. 

(She’s been running from Klaus for years now, it’s hard to think of anything else. To pretend the nightmares of becoming Katherine Pierce don’t haunt her.) 

There’s a suitcase in the closet already packed and a cooler in the fridge full of blood bags ready for this moment. All of the essentials for if she had to run at a moment’s notice; clothing, pictures of her mother and her friends, vervain ground up to ingest on the go. She had planned this for years, had done it before. Elijah was the only new element to this story, a new added twist. 

But Klaus is not there waiting for her, she checks all the other rooms just to be sure, and he is nowhere in sight. Which means she has time. 

She has things she likes, that she’s collected over the years she wants to keep, and thinks she maybe this time she can keep them. That maybe Klaus won’t get to take anything else away from her. Not this time. 

Caroline is halfway through filling a second suitcase with clothes (New York City was the fashion capital after all) when Elijah appears through the door she hadn’t bothered locking. Locks would do nothing to defer an Original. 

“Did you kill the doorman or do invitations just no longer apply to you?” She asks, folding another shirt. 

She wouldn’t put it past them, the Originals finding a way to surpass the rest of the race even further, to enter homes without permission, to will their way inside. Caroline doesn’t put much past them really. Doing so would only leave her weak, vulnerable. 

“The doorman seemed to have no idea who you were,” Elijah drawled stepping further into the room, into the place that was only supposed to belong to her. “But he did have ownership over one of the apartments despite not living here. I politely asked him to grant me an invitation.” 

“I’ll remember that for next time.” Caroline said carefully laying another folded top down in the suitcase. 

It was silk and not meant to be folded or brought on long journeys, but Stefan had given it to her for her eightieth birthday, saying it matched her eyes, and she didn’t want to leave without it. She didn’t want to leave at all. 

It was too late for that now. If life had taught her anything it was that where one Original was, others were sure to follow. 

 

\--

 

Elijah watches as she continues to pack, does nothing to stop her, his eyes following her around the room. Sometimes Caroline notices him paying special attention to the objects she places in her bags, as though trying to decipher their significance. 

She adds a picture frame, complete with the picture that came in it, just to throw him off. 

When he passes this information along to Klaus he can add in the information about the blonde man and woman he had seen a glimpse of in passing, important enough for her to pack away and bring with her on the run. 

(They were a beautiful couple, the picture of love and happiness. Caroline had been passing them off as her parents for the last six months to anyone who asked, only having to compel one person who recognized them as the models they were.) 

“You’re running away again.” He breaks the silence. His voice is smooth and suave and everything his reputation says it should be. 

It almost seems polite, but she can read the accusation underneath, the truth of what he thinks. 

“You know they should call you the smart brother, not the noble one.” Caroline says, “Nothing gets past you.” 

She should know better than to mouth off to an Original, but she knows only one has permission to kill her, and Klaus isn’t there right now and it gives her a rush of power it shouldn’t. And really, she knows that if it’s Elijah’s intention to drag her to his brother kicking and screaming, nothing she says now will change his mind. 

“I’m just curious as to why.” Elijah says. 

She ignores him, reaching for the jewelry box she keeps beside her bed. It’s full of gifts from James, of men that had come before him, that are beautiful but mean little to her. Caroline imagines she’ll sell them before long, a down payment on her home wherever she ends up. 

(She thinks of California again, of the sun and the laughter that filled the air once upon a time. She thinks of the sunlight and how maybe it would have saved her if she had been there.) 

“Have you called him yet?” Caroline asks breaking the silence. “Told him where I was?” 

“No,” He says. 

She looks up at him and she wants to believe him. His face is impassive, almost sympathetic if she stares too long at his eyes, but Elijah has had a thousand years to master his poker face and she plans to be long gone before the sun comes up. 

“How did you figure out where I lived?” She asks. 

“Mrs. Archibald was quite easy to compel,” He says, “I was surprised considering your relationship with her son.” 

“My vervain supply is for me only. I’ve never been that good at sharing.” She tells him, warns him. Caroline isn’t compellable. Hasn’t been for years, since he and his family had invaded Mystic Falls and her life. 

Even after they were gone, off to conquer New Orleans, Caroline had still carried on the ritual. Even when everyone else had stopped. 

Elijah crosses the room, entering her space and she fights the urge to step (flash really) away, and starts folding clothing beside her. He’s very precise and the creases almost rival her own, so she doesn’t demand he stop. Just tries to ignore who it is helping her. 

“Why do you keep running from Niklaus?” He asks. 

“Why do you stay with him?” 

She knows the answer, or the one that he would give anyways. 

Klaus is family and that is a bond that will never be broken, no matter what evil deeds Klaus may commit. Caroline has no siblings, has no family left, so she understands only in theory, but she’s seen it play out in front of her time and time again. 

“Niklaus has told me of your time together.” Elijah says ignoring her question. “I know you are not completely adverse to him.” 

Caroline stops folding, stops thinking about what else she wants to try to fit into her suitcase before she walks out the door and doesn’t look back. Stops pretending anything about this is normal. 

“Klaus can make me feel like I’m the only thing that matters in the world,” She says turning to look at him, remembering moments of years long past. “But that’s all it is. A _feeling._ And I’m not willing to give up my life for a lie, for some make believe scenario that he’ll grow tired of eventually.” 

Elijah nods, closing her suitcase for her and turning towards her again. “For what it is worth, I do not believe it would end like that.” 

“Him ripping out my heart? Literally or metaphorically; it’s always going to end that way.” She tells him. 

Caroline walks passed him, removing the battery from her phone and writing out a quick note to James to explain her absence. A dying mother that no longer exists and no time to say goodbyes. Maybe he would think something of it if she hadn’t already compelled him to accept it if she ever disappeared. 

When she looks up again, Elijah is gone. 

 

\--

 

She still wants to head to California, dreams of living on a vineyard and spending her days in the sun and long trips to the beach. But Bonnie’s condition is getting worse and Stefan’s updates don’t help, so she stays closer to home. 

To the idea of home. 

Caroline will be there for Bonnie’s last days, for their last goodbyes, for her funeral. Klaus does not get to take that away from them. 

She settles down in a little town in Pennsylvania; lives out of a motel and gets a job at a book store. She doesn’t make a lot of friends, spends most of her time reading at the coffee ship across the street when she’s not at work, and her nights at bars searching for something (someone) to clench her thirst. 

She’s been on edge since the moment she had seen Elijah, since he had reentered her life, Klaus’s ghost beside him, and all the time that had passed and she still hasn’t really settled down. Caroline still checks over her shoulder, has fake names and fake IDs depending on where she is, she still listens for footsteps behind her that realistically she knows she wouldn’t be able to hear. 

She’s gone brunette now, like Elena, like Katherine before her. It was supposed to make her feel better, feel more at ease, feel something. But mostly Caroline just stares at her mirror like she’s seeing a stranger. 

Mostly, because she is. 

 

\--

 

“He knows you’re here.” Elijah says. 

She should be surprised when he shows up at the bookstore, sets down a copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ on the counter, and looks into her eyes; but she’s not. 

Caroline thinks she’s been waiting for it for a while now. The only thing surprising is that Klaus is not standing there beside him. 

She rings him up and pretends that she doesn’t know who he is, that he’s just another stranger to pass through her line. She smiles falsely at him and tells him to _‘have a good day, sir’._

She doesn’t tell him she hopes he comes back. 

Her boss chews her out for that.

He finds her at the hotel and he doesn’t need an invitation to get in. She thinks if he had been Klaus he would have been waiting for her in her room after she had gotten done at work, all surprise and theatrics until he had forced her to bend to his will. Elijah holds up the illusion, waits for her to come back and knocks on the door. Even waits for her annoyed invitation to come in before he steps inside. 

The motel room is nothing to look at really, an ordinary room with beige walls and generic paintings and curtains that don’t close all the way. There’s a table in the corner, stacked with books she has yet to donate to the library, and a mini fridge on the other side of the room stocked with blood bags and yogurt because she’s been having a craving lately. 

It’s the cleanest room in the hotel by far, not a spec of dirt or dust in sight. She’s not embarrassed by it, not really, but she doesn’t enjoy the way Elijah sizes it up either. 

He’s the reason she’s there after all, why she had fled her expensive apartment in New York and had ended up there. The least he could do was pretend he wasn’t repulsed by her choice of living quarters.

“He knows you’re here.” He repeats like a broken record, only he predates even those. 

“And you’re what? Here to collect me?” She asks. 

There are two things of hair dye on the nightstand, one red and the other a honey color. She’s been contemplating the change since she had met Elijah’s eyes at the bookstore hours before. Caroline wonders which he would pick or if maybe he prefers her as a brunette. 

Elijah had always preferred brunettes if the rumors were to be believed. 

“He doesn’t know I’m here.” Elijah said. “I took care of the problem before it reached his ears.” 

He had killed the messenger; that is what he doesn’t say. Some morbid part of her, the vampire she supposes, wonders how he did it. 

She remembers Mystic Falls, remembers the day she realized that Klaus’ promise to never return hadn’t meant he wouldn’t still follow her every move. That he wouldn’t send others to do his bidding. 

She remembered Enzo dying in Damon’s arms after he had gotten too close, pressed too hard. She remembered Damon covered in his friend’s blood trying to exact his revenge and more and more vampires appearing out of nowhere, standing in front of her, protecting her. 

An army at her disposal, protecting her, but she was not their ruler and she had no control over their actions. 

(Damon barely lived, mostly thanks to her interference. She never got a thank you.)

Klaus’ promise was a lie hidden in the truth. Klaus had never offered freedom, at most he offered slow suffocation, his hand so gentle she would barely feel the weight of it pressing against her windpipe. 

“Why would you do that?” Caroline asks. 

“To warn you.” Elijah says, “I thought you deserved at least that.” 

She wants to say something sarcastic, something bitchy, because it _is_ the very least he can do really. But there’s something sincere in his eyes and even after so many years and all the bad things that had happened, she still wasn’t the cynical vampire she sometimes liked to think she was. 

She figured she had over four hundred more years to get to where Katherine had been. 

“Thank you for the warning.” Caroline says, “Hopefully I won’t need to see you again.”

He nods and heads towards the door, but she can’t let him go, not yet. 

“How did he find me?” Her voice is small and she hates herself for that. For being so small around someone so big. 

“A vampire he sired saw you feeding.” Elijah says not turning around. 

She had gotten reckless, lonely and reckless, she would not do it again. 

“Why are you helping me?” Caroline asks, not really expecting an answer. But he is still standing in the doorway, still holding in place like a statue, and she thinks it might be her only chance to ask. 

“I know what it’s like to be kept prisoner by my brother,” He says, “I would not willing let the same happen to someone else he loves.” 

It’s a lie, an excuse, she thinks. What he tells himself maybe, to make it okay, to ease the words down his throat. 

(Caroline knows _all_ about self-delusion.) 

She thinks when it boils down to it, it’s about him not wanting his little brother to get his favorite toy when he is not allowed his own. It’s about the temptation of a five hundred year chase that ends with nothing for Klaus to grasp. It’s about retribution. 

He’s gone before she can say any of that out loud. 

It’s probably for the best. 

 

\--

 

Caroline had tried to call it off. She had really tried. But Klaus had laughed at her worries over the phone lines, waved it off like some silly concern. He had kept his promise after all, he had not set a foot in Mystic Falls and wouldn’t, not unless she asked him to. 

“I have an army, sweetheart.” He told her, “What good is it if I can’t use them to my advantage?” 

He had given her an army too. But what use where they when she couldn’t control them? A kingdom and a crown and subjects that bowed down to her meant nothing when they were only doing it to please their king. When they did it out of fear for their lives, their choices stripped away. 

Caroline had begged and begged, but none of it had mattered. 

She doesn’t know why she thought it would. 

 

\--

 

Stefan sends emails telling her of Bonnie’s condition. 

It’s deteriorating he tells her, sometimes she forgets who he is or why she is there. Sometimes she asks where Elena is when she notices she’s not beside him. (Jeremy, Matt, Tyler; all their names follow.) 

The emails are not sent to make her feel guilty, she knows that, but they do anyway. 

She doesn’t write him back. 

Instead she circles the states around Virginia, doesn’t settle down, just circles and circles and pretends it’s not hiding. Caroline Forbes doesn’t hide from anything, doesn’t run away, she faces things head on. She fixes things she does not break them. Not on purpose anyways. 

But that Caroline disappeared a long time ago in a haze of blood and death and she not sure she knows, remembers, how to get her back. 

 

\--

 

Caroline gets tired of the constant moving, so tired she starts to envy Katherine for her ability to never look back, and she settles down in Virginia. 

It’s a small town on the border, far away from Bonnie and Stefan and the home she once knew, but the air smells familiar to her. She breathes it in each morning and it makes her ache in ways she hadn’t expected. 

She finds a little house with a white picket fence and adopts a dog and goes running every morning; the perfect picture of a human life she once would have wanted. 

She dresses carefully, immaculately, with never a hair out of place, but nothing flashy that would gain her attention. She never wears the color red or even black. She wears whites and pinks and pastels that don’t catch anyone’s eyes. 

She volunteers at the hospital, wears a candy striper uniform and complains about the bad coffee with the other volunteers and nurses. She runs the blood drives and hands out cookies and signs up more people than anyone before her. 

Caroline settles into town and she waits for Stefan’s call. Waits for Bonnie’s death to near. 

Waits. 

 

\--

 

She dreams of Elijah sometimes. He has become the Original ghost to haunt her now. 

His dark eyes lock onto hers and she can’t force herself to look away. 

_Caroline, sweet Caroline,_ he says, _you should have run further away. You’re smarter than this._

She’s not. She knows she’s not. 

( _“I’m too smart to be seduced by you.”_ She had once said. 

_“I know, that’s why I like you.”_ Klaus had responded, a smile on his lips like he knew something she didn’t. 

Apparently he did.) 

The dreams are always different. 

Sometimes Elijah’s hands wrap around her throat until she can’t breathe, until she sees Katherine’s smiling face staring back at her, beckoning her towards her. Sometimes his hands skim her thighs, leave her trembling and wanting and confused. Sometimes he doesn’t touch her at all, just watches her as she does mundane tasks around her home. 

They all end the same. 

_You’re smarter than this._

They end with him lying to her. 

 

\--

 

 _It’s time._

Stefan’s email says nothing else but she understands what he means. She’s been waiting for this for so long she doesn’t expect the tears to fall like they do. 

She leaves her golden retriever with her neighbors, compels them to keep him and take care of him right, and rents a car to take her to Mystic Falls. 

Caroline leaves all traces of this life behind. All her important possessions already in storage somewhere she hopes Klaus can’t find. But there’s a picture in her wallet, worn and old, of her with her two best friends smiling at the camera. They were young enough that Elena thought it was a good idea to have bangs and Bonnie was still wearing her braces and Caroline stood towering above them both, having gone through her awkward growing pains first. 

It’s the last trace of her old life that she carries with her and she wonders if Bonnie remembers that day like she does. If she remembers the days before Stefan and Klaus. Before magic and vampires and pain that never goes away. 

She hopes Bonnie does. 

(Caroline’s starting to forget.) 

She rents a car and drives across the state, listens to the car give her directions and takes it all in mechanically. 

She pulls over twice to cry and hates herself for it. 

Caroline was supposed to be strong. 

 

\--

 

Stefan had moved Bonnie out of the hospital and into a house that had stood since before even Stefan had been alive. There are nurses to take care of her, walking in and out of rooms, and machines that track her heartbeat and keep her hydrated, and the scent of sage is pungent in the air. 

Caroline can recognize it all before she even enters the home, before she even exits her car. 

She spends her days at Bonnie’s bedside, her hand in Bonnie’s, and she forces smiles as she talks about the things her friend has missed. Bonnie takes it all in with a look of happiness and a crinkle of her brow, and begs her to tell her more stories about all of her adventures. 

“Where’s Elena?” Bonnie asks in the middle of a story about Italy. 

“I…” 

“She said she would be here too.” Bonnie says, “She needs help with her history homework. Did she sneak off with Matt again?” 

Stefan is behind her and she wonders how often he’s been asked this question before. She wonders what he has said. 

“You’ll see her soon.” Caroline promises. “It won’t be long now.” 

Stefan leaves the room, as she pushes Bonnie’s hair out of her eyes. 

Bonnie smiles back at her and Caroline doesn’t cry. 

 

\--

 

Katherine had left a parting gift, because she wasn’t just the monster Klaus had made her into but was the girl she had always been, the one who had wanted everything and had gotten nothing in the end. 

Caroline understands her all too well, but hates her just the same. 

Elena’s body was taken away from her again, even when she had just gotten it back. She was taken over by urges to hurt the ones she loves, to kill and maim and destroy. And maybe some part of her had liked it, wanted it, but she was never the reason behind it. 

She had no choice in the matter, only an unclenching hunger than made Caroline back away in fear even when Stefan had trapped Elena in chains. 

Elena begged them to make it stop, to make the pain stop, to please, _please_ , just make it stop. 

She never asked for them to save her. 

They tried to anyways. 

 

\--

 

Bonnie lies asleep in her bed, her hair gray and flowing over her shoulders as Caroline counts her heartbeats. 

All the changes over the years, the wrinkles and laugh lines and long gray hair, and all Caroline can see is the girl she danced with in her bedroom, hairbrushes acting as fake microphones as they belted out songs. 

“You should sleep.” Stefan tells her, his hand resting on her back. 

She has the strangest urge to tell him she’ll sleep when she’s dead. It bubbles up inside her and she has to fight down the laughter that comes with it. 

“I’ll sleep when it over,” Caroline says instead. 

The way he looks at her makes her feel like he knows what she meant to say. Stefan was always good at reading her. 

“I’ll wake you up if anything happens.” He tells her. 

“You’ve been here all this time, you took care of her.” Caroline says, “It’s my turn now.” 

“She knows you would have been here if you could.” Stefan says. 

“I could have been here,” Caroline says, “I made a choice.” 

 

\--

 

Her mother died on a Sunday. Caroline always remembers that, has it stored away for when she needs proof that God does not exist. (As though her fangs were not enough.) 

She died fighting a vampire, her throat torn out, and blood soaking into the carpeting around her. Liz took the vampire with her, three wood tipped bullets to his heart, and Caroline thinks she would be satisfied with that. 

Klaus had found her at her gravesite, long after the funeral was over, but Caroline had still stubbornly refused to leave her mother’s side. She hated him for being there, for ruining everything, for not letting her have this one day in peace. For ruining that too.

( _“I heard about your father—”_

 _“Don’t.”_ She had said and he had let it go but he hadn’t learned his lesson.) 

Klaus had appeared beside her, looking regretful and almost apologetic, like he hadn’t put so many mothers like her own into the ground with no regret. He had no right being there. No right to act like he understood. He had torn out his own mother’s heart a thousand years ago in this same town. He would never understand. 

She had told him to go away. Told him to go back to his precious kingdom and peasants who would kiss his feet. 

What good is an army, she had mocked, if her mother was still dead. 

“You weren’t here, love.” Klaus had told her, “There was no reason for them to be either.” 

Every horrible thing he had ever done, to her and to everyone else she loved, and she had never hated him more than in that moment. 

Had never hated herself so much. 

 

\--

 

“I’ve missed you.” Bonnie says grasping Caroline’s hand as tightly as she can. It’s as though she’s afraid that it’s Caroline who might disappear and not the other way around. Caroline can’t blame her though, she’s gotten good at disappearing over the years.

“I missed you too.” Caroline says, “So much. You have no idea.” 

She had seen Bonnie so many times, in so many different people. Had heard her laughter in the crowd, seen her smile on another woman’s face, had heard her words in head, and it was never enough. It was never Bonnie beside her. 

In the beginning they had tried staying in contact. Emails that told of Bonnie’s adventures, of her life, of when she felt she was starting to get boring and old. Caroline’s consisted of cryptic comments and promises that she was still okay, nothing of her life as it was at the time. 

Some things they never talked about. 

Slowly the emails began to dwindle. Every few years, Caroline would check in, promise she was okay and make sure Bonnie was too. Once, drunk and in an act of desperation she had called. Bonnie had answered the phone, her voice deeper than Caroline remembered, the sound of it different than it played in her head, but Caroline hadn’t been able to say anything at all. Eventually Bonnie had hung up. 

“I was always afraid you’d forget about us.” Bonnie says. 

“I could never. A thousand years from now and I could never forget you.” 

“You will,” Bonnie nods her head slowly, “But it’s okay, it’s just how it works.” 

“No, it’s not.” 

“You were going to be a bridesmaid at my wedding.” She says, “Remember? You had the colors picked out.” 

“Well I wasn’t going to wear _orange_.” Caroline huffs, thinking of the phase her friend had gone through. God, they were once so young and innocent. So unbroken. 

“But you weren’t there.” Bonnie says. 

“I know.” Caroline apologizes, “I…I know.” 

Bonnie’s hand reaches up, grasps on to her still brown hair and smiles. “I’ve missed you, Elena.” She says. 

It takes everything in her not to cry. 

 

\--

 

Bonnie falls asleep and Caroline sends Stefan out to buy her hair dye. Blonde like she had before. Blonde; bright and cheerful, and everything she wasn’t in that moment. Golden blonde, like sunlight. 

“She just gets confused.” He tells her, but it doesn’t help. 

And once he’s gone, she curls up in one of the empty rooms and cries, listening to the sounds of her best friend’s heartbeat slowly across the hall. 

She wants to be stronger than this, wants to be a better, stronger person for Bonnie, because this was always supposed to be about her. So much of Bonnie’s life had been wrapped up in protecting the people she loved, the least Caroline could offer was to make sure she knew her death was her own, that she knew the people who loved her were there and would miss her. Would ache for her and the loss of her light in the world. 

But the tears wouldn’t stop falling and when Stefan came back, he was greeted with red rimmed eyes and false smiles. 

“Caroline…” 

He could still hear Bonnie’s heartbeat, she knows his concern is not for her friend. 

“I’m going to be a little while,” Caroline says taking the little box from him. “You should sit with her in case she wakes up.” 

He nods and disappears. 

Caroline wishes it was that easy to do the same this time. 

 

\--

 

Caroline practices her smile in front of the mirror before she comes out again. Touches up her makeup, so it wasn’t as though she was crying at all. Even curls her hair like she used to in high school, leaves it flowing down her back. 

The blonde hair is a familiar sight but feels wrong somehow. Feels like tempting fate. But it’s Bonnie and that’s all the reason she needs. 

Stefan is waiting for when she comes out, standing across the hall with his arms crossed as if guarding Bonnie’s room. She can still hear her friend’s heartbeat pounding in her ears, hear the blood rushing in her veins, and her even breathing. 

For now, Bonnie is fine. 

“A nurse is with her.” Stefan says. Though they both know that they’ll know if something happens before anyone else in the house, the perks and downfalls of being a vampire. But it was good to know her friend was not alone. 

“Good.” Caroline nods and keeps standing in the threshold of the bathroom. 

Stefan makes the decision for her and steps towards her. He stops in front of her, grasping a piece of her hair newly blonde hair between his fingers. 

“I like it better this way.” He tells her and all she can think of is California again. Of sunlight and Stefan’s laughter and the feeling of the cold water against her skin and sand between her toes. 

(Sometimes she wonders if she’ll ever stop missing California.) 

She smiles hesitantly at him, touching the hand still grasping her hair and gently pushing it away. She thinks maybe she should say something. Tell him she’s missed him. Tell him about California and how she wants to go back there. Tell him anything really. 

But none of it seems right. She can’t form the words, the right ones or the wrong ones, so instead she just smiles gently and makes her way back to Bonnie. 

Bonnie was what was important after all. 

 

\--

 

Caroline has blonde hair again for the first time in years when Bonnie dies. She is holding her hand and Bonnie is smiling serenely as Caroline fights back tears. 

Her heartbeat is getting weaker, but you would never imagine it by looking at her. 

“It’s okay,” Bonnie promises, “I’m ready.” 

_I’m not_ , Caroline wants to say, but she doesn’t. She’s as selfish as she’s ever been, selfish enough to want to force vampire blood down Bonnie’s throat and keep her forever, but being selfish hadn’t gotten her anywhere in life. 

Being selfish just makes her more like Katherine than she already is. 

“I’ll get to see them all again,” Bonnie smiles, “I won’t be alone.” 

She lists off all the people she’s missed and will get to see, includes Abby in the list and Caroline feels a pang in her chest because she doesn’t even know what happened to her best friend’s mother, just that she’s gone. 

Caroline closes her eyes, but she forces a smile. “I know they’ll be happy to see you too.” She says. 

Stefan is on the other side of the bed, his hand holding Bonnie’s as well, and Caroline wonders if he’s done this before. Sat by someone’s bedside and watched the life drain out of them. Caroline has. And she knows it doesn’t get easier. 

“I can see Grams,” Bonnie says her voice faraway. “She says it’s time.” 

“No, I—”

She’s not supposed to be selfish, she knows this. This is the natural order of things; people are born, they grow old, they die. The lucky ones at least. But Caroline doesn’t want it to happen, not when she’s had such little time. 

“Tell Miss Shelia to take good care of you.” Caroline says and Bonnie smiles, her eyes fluttering shut.

“I’ll be seeing you.” Bonnie says. 

She squeezes Caroline’s hand one last time before she stops breathing. 

The machine’s go haywire, and nurses run from all corners of the house, but all Caroline can do is stare at her dead best friend.

 

\--

 

Liz Forbes’ funeral was a closed affair, just close friends and family at her own request. Caroline made all the arrangements, followed her mother’s directions to a tee, but Bonnie had been the one to carry them out. 

It had been ten years since the towns’ people had last seen Caroline, since she had disappeared, but she still looked like the seventeen year old girl from the Founder’s Day Parade. A new hair cut couldn’t change that. 

Bonnie had laugh lines around her mouth and her eyes crinkled with mirth when Jeremy said something unintentionally funny. No one would question her. 

Tyler showed up at the funeral, his hatred and anger lessened over the years, and his respect for Liz only growing. Meredith Fell is the only Council member that is allowed and she stood in the back, feeling out of place most likely. Matt and Jeremy stood behind her, all grown up, and Bonnie and Stefan each held one of her hands. 

A pastor someone had compelled read out the eulogy. 

Caroline hadn’t heard a word of it. 

She could remember where everyone was, where they were standing and even what they were wearing (so much black, she should have been used to it by then), but she couldn’t remember what anyone had said. If she had even said anything herself. 

Liz Forbes was lowered into the ground and all Caroline could think about was the idea of being an orphan, that they were all orphans now, and wasn’t that funny? A vampire that was an orphan. 

She remembered having to fight back hysterical laughter, her hand tightening in Bonnie’s grasp. 

It was the last time she had seen Bonnie before— 

 

\--

 

Bonnie’s funeral is a grand affair. 

Stefan takes care of the details under the guise of being a distant relative of Bonnie’s dearly departed husband, and Caroline help had helped plan out the details in the shadows, never to be seen. 

So many people showed up, so many people who had loved and known Bonnie, who had come to her for guidance and help. Some who knew what she really was, what she was really capable of, and others who just remembered her sweet smile and ability to put others above herself. 

The funeral is outside and Caroline watches on from a grove of trees, disappearing into the darkness in her own dark dress. 

No one notices her and that is how it supposed to be. How they planned it. She thinks it almost went off as planned. 

When she returns from the funeral she finds a note on her bed, a piece of paper with loopy writing and a punch to her already broken heart. 

_He is coming for you._

 

\--

 

“You don’t have to go.” Stefan says as she shoves clothes into her bag. The colors mix together and silk gets bunched up and pushed to the bottom but she doesn’t stop. She’ll sort it all out later. 

Caroline and Stefan both know it’s a lie. He might not trust Elijah, she might not either she can never be sure, but the note can’t just be ignored because they want it not to be true. 

“You’re right,” Caroline says, “I could stay and we can all finally see what happens when the game ends and Klaus catches me.” 

Stefan sighs and tugs at his tie because he’s still in his funeral clothes, but he doesn’t say anything else. 

“I’d stay if I thought I could.” Caroline says thinking of Bonnie, of her body still fresh in the ground, and the dirt on Stefan’s hands that he hasn’t had time to wash off and the mud on her boots. 

“But you can’t.” 

“The note didn’t just say he was coming,” Caroline says, “It says he’s coming _for me._ I don’t want to wait to find out what that means.” 

She reaches for her black dress, the one she had worn to the funeral, and puts it back down. She won’t be taking it with her. Caroline was tired of funerals. Of death. Of blood on her hands. 

“Do you have vervain?” Caroline zips up her suitcase and finally meets Stefan’s eyes. 

“I do.” He nods. 

“Good, you’ll need it.” Caroline says. 

She thinks about hugging him, about telling him how much she’s missed him, about how much she’ll miss him again. She thinks about thanking him for taking care of Bonnie when she couldn’t, for being there and handling the situation, for never asking her if she was okay because it would have only have made her crack. 

She thinks of telling him she still has the silk blue blouse he had given her and the seashells he had strung like beads. She thinks of telling him goodbye with a smile, like she knows it won’t be the last time she ever says it. 

In the end she does none of these things. 

In the end, she just walks away again, her hand grazing against his is her only goodbye. 

 

\--

 

She goes west. It seems for the best, she doesn’t feel like dealing with men with foreign accents or putting her language skills to the test. So she steals a car and goes west. 

(It’s not _technically_ stealing, all the paperwork is squared away at the dealership, but no money exchanges hands. If it was a nicer car or the owner was a nicer person, maybe she’d feel guilty. 

She doesn’t.) 

She settles down in Kansas, ditches the car before she enters the state and settles in a town big enough to get lost in and be easily forgotten. Who after all would ever think of looking for her there when she has the whole world to explore?

Caroline gets a job at a dingy bar, where she might be the only one who bothers to clean anything other than the glasses, and wears a nametag reading ‘Jenna’, and the patrons are never regulars, all just people passing through. 

The owner hadn’t wanted to hire her; she didn’t fit in, she smiled too bright (even if it was fake), and she looked too young. But compulsion fixed that easily enough. Caroline figures she didn’t demand a pay bump or anything like that, so it’s even enough. Or, she tells herself that anyways. 

The bar is mostly filled with men who stare too long and women who want nothing more than to drink their troubles away, and Caroline’s mind is too occupied with remembering orders, cleaning the backroom, and doing inventory to think about anything else. 

(To think about Bonnie and what she had left behind.) 

She likes it best that way. 

 

\--

 

She meets Dean at the bar. He’s charming and nice to look at and younger than most of the patrons by at least ten years. He’s younger than Caroline by much more than that but that’s not unusual anymore and sometimes she even manages to forget. He smiles at her and when he reads her name tag he raises an eyebrow like he doesn’t believe it, like she doesn’t look like a Jenna. 

(She doesn’t of course; Jenna was protective and intelligent, a wildfire just looking for a forest to burn down before her light got snuffed out too soon. 

Caroline is…

Caroline doesn’t like to think about what she is.) 

But he never asks her about it. He smiles knowingly whenever he says her name, but Dean never questions it or her. Never asks about her home town or _‘what a pretty little thing like her was doing in a place like this’_. 

Caroline likes that about him. 

It’s why she invites him back to her apartment, why she lets him into her bed, why she does it again and again until the bar actually has one regular customer. 

It’s not serious, not a _relationship_ or anything like it, but it gives her a sense of stability and she likes that. 

 

\--

 

“Why are you so distracted?” Dean asks, tearing his attention away from the game and towards her. 

He has the Giants on the television and she had convinced him at some point she doesn’t remember that they were her favorite team too. He had even bought her a Giants cap to prove that he remembered. 

“I’m not distracted, just hungry.” Caroline says, her eyes narrowing in on his neck. 

She could see the veins just under the surface, and she thinks if she said something suggestive enough, she could hear his blood rushing to the surface in excitement too. 

“You want to order in?” He asks picking up the phone. 

What she wants is to rip into his jugular and drink him dry. What she wants is to know what his blood tastes like. What she wants is for this desire for him to only be about his skills in the bedroom, but life isn’t that fair. For either of them. 

“I’m sure I can find something here.” She says. 

It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s the wrong decision. 

She makes it anyways. 

 

\--

 

She doesn’t kill him. She wants to, every part of her wants to, even the ones that like him, but she doesn’t. 

Killing Dean would just leave another body to be found. A trail for someone else to follow. Mystic Falls had taught her better than to leave a trail of bodies in her wake and even on her worst days that was enough to keep her from killing anyone. 

Besides, Dean was a nice guy at heart. One that cared and had nephews he chased around and a sister he sent money to. He wasn’t just a walking happy meal. Not that those existed anymore. 

So she compels him to forget, compels him before hand to make sure it doesn’t hurt at all as she rips into his throat. Compels him to stop coming into the bar and to think they had just broken up, his memories of her to fade over time until she was just another in a long line of pretty blondes he had met once upon a time. 

They lose the only regular they have and John, the owner, jokes meanly that Dean must have tired of her. 

“Men don’t like a tease.” He tells her. 

Caroline imagines sinking her teeth into his neck and claiming his bar for her own. But that seemed too much like putting down roots for her to do it. 

 

\--

 

She keeps the letter Elijah had left her. 

Five simple words, written so carefully and precise she’s almost jealous. Five words with so much weight and power. Five words that still sometimes puzzle her, make her wonder why they appeared, why they were delivered to her. 

_He is coming for you._

On her darker days she thinks of framing it. Of hanging it on her wall as a focal point for people to look at. A conversation starter that no one but her would remember. A reminder of what was waiting for her. 

_He is coming for you._

She thinks of framing it. 

She never thinks of throwing it away.

 

\--

 

Her time at the bar comes to an end as she always knew it would. 

(Something was always going to chase her out of there, even if it was just her own paranoia.) 

But somehow, she imagined the reason to be more familiar, for it to be _someone_ familiar to send her running in the opposite direction or dragged away by her hair. She didn’t know who or why, but sometime in her life the people she knew had become more dangerous in her mind then those she had never met.

Another product of her years in Mystic Falls she supposes. 

Caroline notices when they come in to the bar, her hair prickles and she can sense the change in the air. But they are also loud and demanding, and even John seems tired and frustrated just by looking at them, so it’s easy to brush off as annoyance and hunger. 

John sends her to take their orders. 

She greets them with a false cheery disposition that doesn’t fit the atmosphere and asks them if she can get them a round of beers, “Or are you looking for something a little harder?” She asks with a forced smile. 

Her words are met with silence as they all turn to stare at her, some cocking their heads and others glaring outright. 

“Or John makes a mean reheated bowl of chili.” Caroline says confused. 

There’s background noise, distant in the back of her head, almost made of white noise because she can’t make anything out. 

One of the men’s eyes turn gold and suddenly it all makes sense. 

 

\--

 

It’s a blood bath. 

Caroline looks around at it and sees the crime scene photos her mother had left open on her computer, the gruesome overly done scenes from horror movies she hadn’t liked but Matt had been obsessed with, she sees the photos of Stefan’s victims she was never supposed to know about. 

The smell of the blood in the air makes her hungry. It curls in her stomach and makes her wish werewolf blood tasted better, less bitter, and that she had had more time to savor it. 

They were like all the werewolf packs she had met before, they turned on her and everyone else in the bar before she had a chance to blink. One vampire after all must mean there were more. 

(There was only her.) 

John lay dead next to his cash register, fittingly she thought, and other patrons laid dead from broken necks and torn out hearts. 

Caroline had killed the pack, had fought tooth and nail, digging them in until they all lied dead at her feet, memories of her past, of other werewolves, of cages and vervain, of snapped necks and wooden bullets, turning her vision red and fueling her rage.

Maybe she should be sorry they were dead. Tyler was a werewolf and he never wished her any harm, not really, not purposefully, not of his own violation. 

But he was the only one she had ever met. 

There was a burly man huddled in the corner, bigger than her, stronger than most, but no match for her or a pack of trained werewolves, even in their human form. His arm was broken and his head was dripping blood and she remembered pulling a female wolf off of him before she had snapped the wolf’s neck. 

(She had dark hair and she kept thinking of Hayley and she wonders if she’ll ever get to put her past behind her and move on. Or if maybe it would just keep repeating.) 

Caroline bends down in front of him, her hand reaching out of its own violation and swiping some of the blood off his face, before sucking the finger into her mouth. She was tired and hungry, so sue her for taking advantage. 

“What’s your name?” She asks. 

“Jim.” He croaks. 

He’s scared of her. Scared he’ll be the last victim and she doesn’t blame him. Her white blouse is soaked in blood and it’s caked in her hair and she’s still hungry. Caroline would be afraid too. 

“Okay, Jim, this is what you’re going to do.” Caroline meets his eyes and she sees his pupils expand and smiles, “You’re going to wait for ten minute after I leave, your arm won’t hurt during that time, nothing will, but once it’s over all the pain will come back and you’ll call 911 and tell them you need help. When you talk to the police you tell them that you don’t remember much, that you think you hit your head, and it all seems like a blur. You tell that to anyone who asks. You remember the group coming in and then a fight breaking out and when you woke up, it was like this. You don’t know how you made it out alive.” 

He nods his head, his eyes still locked with her. 

“And tell them one more thing, it’s very important that you tell them.” 

“I’ll tell them.”

“Tell them you remember someone named Klaus being the reason for it all. You remember hearing his name.” Caroline says. 

“Klaus,” He repeats. 

“Yes, tell them that he’s the reason for all of this.” 

No one ever said Caroline wasn’t a vindictive bitch. 

 

\--

 

Caroline washes off the blood, but not before leaving trails of it down the bathroom walls and streaks on the sink. 

A clue for whoever finds the empty room. 

She compels the landlord to not remember her, plants false memories of a man who lived there instead. He had seen a blonde go up into the apartment with him once, but that was the most he remembered. He had preferred brunettes. 

After that Caroline went back to hotels, alternating between laying outside by the pool and flirting with the bartenders and cabana boys. She decided she was a Mai Tai kind of girl for the time being, bought bikinis in all different colors, and spent her days reading trashy magazines and romance novels as she sat in the sun. 

She never ventured further west than Texas, spent almost two weeks there, but it was still nice. Held up the illusion well. 

She spent a week in the Florida Keys and another in Orlando, skipping over all the normal tourist attractions and just staying inside the hotel while she was there. There were some amazing masseuses there. 

She continued her life of leisure and swimsuits up the East Coast. 

 

\--

 

Caroline was barely in North Carolina a few days when Elijah finds her. He didn’t bother with proper decorum this time, instead he was waiting for her inside her room. 

(He and his brother are more alike than he will ever admit.) 

She almost doesn’t notice him at first, sitting in the corner of the room in a chair as if it was a throne, a newspaper resting on his lap. Caroline had never sat on the chair before, had barely even used the couch in the first room of the suite. 

She was almost surprised to see him there. But she thinks she might have stopped being surprised somewhere along the way. 

“You know there was a _‘do not disturb sign’_ on the door.” Caroline says unwrapping the towel around her waist to start toweling her hair dry. 

A shower would have to wait now and she’s not sure it’s possible to actually make Elijah uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt to try. At the very least, if he’s there as Klaus’ errand boy and not as some sort of odd ally, she could use the information to her advantage. She highly doubted Klaus would appreciate him seeing so much of her. 

“It’s still there,” Elijah says, “And the hotel staff, as well as the other guests on this floor, and I have come to an understanding not to disturb us. No matter what they may hear.” 

Caroline’s back straightened and she stopped toweling her hair. Water dripping down her neck didn’t seem so important anymore. 

“And what is it they might hear?” She asks slowly. 

Elijah lets out a small chuckle at her posture, as though she is an amusing animal, sensing danger in her own reflection.

“Nothing, I hope. I wish to have a polite conversation.” He says, “But one never knows how you will react and yelling for help will only lead for more bodies for the police to find.” 

She glances down to the paper on his lap, she sees the words ‘massacre’ and ‘Kansas’ in bold print. As if the journalist knew what a real massacre was. 

“Still getting your news the old fashioned way, I see.” She says to fill up the silence. Caroline had come to hate the silence and Elijah may not be who she wants to share her words with, but he was the only one who was there. 

“Many things have changed over the years, but I still prefer the feel of paper in my hands.” Elijah says, quickly standing up, “It makes it feel more real.” 

She briefly wonders if the only reason newspapers still exist is because Elijah wants them too. 

“You should see the crime scene photos; that would probably do it for you better.” Caroline says. 

She stays on her side of the room, facing him down, but her heart is racing and she knows he can hear it. The only thing on her side is the knowledge that Klaus is the only one who can kill her, loving her had given him that privilege, but that didn’t keep her completely safe. Not from someone like Elijah.

“I have seen them.” He says, “And read the articles and police reports. Twelve deaths, only one left alive to tell the tale, and a man name Klaus somehow in the middle of it all. Apparently they found his apartment. He didn’t even bother cleaning up the blood.” 

“Seems careless.” Caroline smiles. 

“I underestimated you.” Elijah says. He takes a step towards her, almost smiling, but she doesn’t believe it. The noblest brother never smiled without a reason. It was known throughout the supernatural world. 

“Most people do,” She shrugs, “I think it’s the blonde hair.” 

She can still remember Klaus’ shocked face out of her peripheral vision, his voice echoing in the woods as he realized what she was doing, right before she plunged a knife in that witch’s heart. 

Twelve people died then too, only one survivor among them. 

It was almost poetic. 

“It was a brazen thing to do.” Elijah shakes her out of her memories. 

“They were werewolves and they started it,” Caroline says, “I just finished it.” 

“Yes, you did that very well. Covered up your own tracks and pointed them in an entire different direction. No one in that town even recalls your presence.” He says. 

She hadn’t spent much time outside of the bar. The only one to miss her was her landlord, who would really just miss her rent checks. All these years and Caroline had finally learned how to hide. 

“I’ve been told I have a forgettable face.” 

“Funny, I find it quite familiar.” Elijah says, “I’ve seen it appear in so many of his pieces of art. It does make me question the hold you have over him.” 

The ‘him’ is never in question. It doesn’t matter who it is talking or asking the questions. She always knows who they are talking about. Caroline and Klaus, linked together for eternity, whether she likes it or not. 

“I don’t have any sort of hold over him,” Caroline fights to stay calm, “He made a decision about what he wanted and he chased after it. Eventually he’ll get tired of chasing.” 

“I expected Niklaus to be furious when he read of this,” Elijah says as though she hadn’t commented at all. “I expected anger and a quest for retribution. But he laughed. Niklaus laughed and called you exquisite. And then he sent a group of his most trusted men to track whatever trail you must have left in your wake.” 

“Is that why you’re here?” 

“No, you’ll find that problem already taken care of.” Elijah says placing the paper down on bed, “They heard of a girl matching your description in Montreal. I believe they’ll be there for some time.” 

“And you?” Caroline asks. She wants to know if there still playing this game of white knight and damsel or if he’s there to carry her back to Klaus and gain favor with the King of New Orleans. 

“I’m visiting Rebekah,” Elijah says, “She’s staying somewhere nearby.” 

She wonders if he’s lying. She really can’t tell. She wonders if anyone can. 

“And you thought you’d just drop by?” 

“I thought I would compliment you.” Elijah says stepping forward finally, until he is invading her space. He is a vampire and he is cold by nature (cold hearted), but she can feel the heat radiating off of him. 

“On what?” She asks. 

He cocks his head, but doesn’t answer. Instead his hand reaches out, grasping at her blonde hair. 

“I like it better this way.” He echoes Stefan. “It suits you.” 

 

\--

 

Elijah disappears without so much as a goodbye, he just suddenly isn’t there anymore. The sound of the door closing behind him is the only proof he actually was.

Caroline goes and takes her shower like she had always planned; washes the chlorine out of her hair and the smell of Elijah off her skin. He had barely even touched her but she could smell him on her, could smell him all around her suite, as if he had touched everything in it while waiting for her.

After that, she gets the hell out of dodge. 

Repacks her one bag, leaves her red bikini on the bathroom floor for the maids to dispose of, and puts the paper Elijah had left into her bag.

She had read all the articles online, followed the police’s investigation, but he was right. The paper in her hands, it made it more real.

Caroline drives to South Carolina from there in a car she borrows from a very nice man, who will report it missing in exactly twenty four hours, and heads towards the nearest airport. She didn’t know how much Elijah had told her was true, how much of it was lies, or how much blended them both, but she knew she couldn’t stay. 

She hops on the first plane that will take her to Europe, Spain to be exact, and compels them to leave her name off the manifest. She smiles at the cameras though.

She thinks Klaus will appreciate that.

In Spain she steals another passenger’s ticket and heads to Tokyo. In the beginning Caroline had imagined Klaus would be narcissistic enough to search for her in Paris, Rome, Tokyo; he might have even. But she thinks he’s stopped looking for her there by now.

She spends her days shopping and playing the tourist and her nights singing karaoke with drunk business men until she has them eating out of her hands. After that it’s easy to lead them in to back rooms and dark corners and drink her fill. She gives them just enough blood to heal the wounds and compels them to forget what happened and find something to eat.

Caroline doesn’t need an army of accidently turned vampires nipping at her heels.

 

\--

 

The tree bark is rough against her back, causing scratches that disappear almost as soon as they are made, but they will be seared into her memory. She’ll remember everything that happened, will never forget, she knows that before she even kisses him. 

(Make a deal with a devil and sign it in your own blood; the scars will stay there forever, long after you are dragged to hell.) 

His hands are warm against her bare skin as he grasps her hips tightly, bringing her closer to him. It’s a strange thing to focus on when he’s found just the right place on her neck, his lips on her throat and his teeth skimming her skin, but she remembers it still. Vampires are cold creature, she doesn’t think she’s met one as cold as him before, but his hands are warm and he ignites a fire within in that is new. 

His teeth graze her skin again and she lets out a gasp that holds only the tiniest bit of fear. He chuckles, his breathe against her neck, and the fire grows higher, and she wants to force herself closer. 

“So impatient.” He raises his head and its Elijah staring back at her. Brown eyes meeting blue. 

“Elijah,” She breathes, pleads, and he tightens his hold on her waist. “You’re not supposed to be here.” 

“Neither are you.” He smiles his lips brushing against hers as he talks, “But it didn’t stop you.” 

 

\--

 

She doesn’t stay in Tokyo for long. The lights are too bright and years of running and she still hasn’t learned to adjust to time zone changes easily. She tires of playing the tourist quickly and the empty pictures she takes don’t help. 

Caroline misses the days when someone else would be in them with her. When the smile on her face was real. 

She had grown accustomed to always playing a part. But in Tokyo her character was only two dimensional, and Caroline hated her. And she knew eventually it would begin to show. 

She heads north, goes to Russia and buys herself a new wardrobe. The bikinis from North Carolina are discarded, so are the short dresses in bright colors she wore in Tokyo’s clubs. She spends money on coat after coat that make her look cute and fuzzy sweaters that make her feel warm in a way she has missed. Boots take up a whole suit case and she loses tracks of the amount of scarves she buys.

She settles down on a train that spans the country and stays. She likes the soothing sound of the wheels underneath her, she likes the hum of the engines and the voices around her. 

Caroline uses the locals to help her with her Russian. She knows the basics already, has had years to learn, and has read all the right books and used all the right apps, but these are real Russians who she can use to teach her how to sound like one too. That can teach her words that aren’t in the book, pronunciation that isn’t found online. With their help she’ll be able to fashion herself into a real Russian girl. 

(At the very least she can become a Russian doll, one layer after another being built around her.) 

She never leaves the train. It certainly isn’t the worst place she has slept, and she gets so used to the rhythm of the train, she wonders if she’ll miss it when she finally steps off. The officials are compelled to ignore her, to not question her presence; she blends into the background to them and she likes it that way. 

She spends her days conversing with the others on the train, learning and soaking in the language, until she can convincingly be seen as one of them. Caroline compels them to help her and then to forget her, to believe they had spent the train ride sleeping or watching the scenery passing them by. 

Rinse and repeat. 

Some are nicer than others, some harsher and more demanding, and some more gentle in their approach. But she gets there. 

A man slides in the seat in front of her, smiles as he looks her up and down. “Здравствуйте, я Сергей.” _(Hello, I am Sergei.)_

Caroline smiles back, a dangerous smile to all those who know to look for it, “Меня зовут Анастасия.” _(My name is Anastasia.)_ She says, her dialect and words carefully constructed. 

“Ах, принцесса в маскировке.” _(Ah, a princess in disguise.)_

Caroline shakes her head and gives a coy laugh. 

“Why bother with disguises?” 

Her fangs descend and the veins around her eyes appear and she is on him before he can scream. 

None of the other passengers or officials notice them or his pleas for help; she had planned it that way. 

 

\--

 

She settles down in Saint Petersburg and immediately maps out the escape routes. She can easily find her way to an airport, a bus station or go back to her trains. She can be in Finland within a day and from there anywhere she wants to go. 

It gives her a slight bit of a relief. 

( _Always have an exit strategy,_ it’s a rule that’s now engraved in her mind, etched in writing that doesn’t belong to her. Reminding her that it should never to be forgotten.) 

She gets an apartment and compels her way into a job as a tour guide at The State Hermitage Museum. It takes her time to get familiar with the all of the work it houses, to become familiar with the museum itself, but she does and she does a good job. 

Sometimes she worries that the old Caroline Forbes is dead and buried, but she’s reminded of her when she sinks herself into her role, into her new life. As she studied and studied and compelled her way in passed closing time and learned everything she needed to be the best at what she did. 

Caroline Forbes never died, but she was buried underneath so many other layers it was sometimes hard to fight her way out. 

When she’s in the museum, Caroline finds herself gravitating to the painting of Judith in the museum. It’s not a Russian piece of art, but she loves the story behind it, the image of the woman and the man at her feet and the sword in her hand. She loves the serene look on her face, the look of it all being over. 

Sometimes when she looks too hard, she starts to see Elena (see Katherine) in the painting; Judith’s face forming into there’s, her hair darkening and she imagines her having brown eyes. 

When she sees Elena it becomes Klaus at her feet and she smiles. 

Elena would have won this game already if she had been there. 

 

\--

 

Elena had begged them to make it stop, to put an end to it all. Caroline can still remember the screams, of pain and terror, of anger and hatred. 

The virus ate away at her, left her hungering for vampire blood and deteriorating from the werewolf poison running through her veins. 

Stefan had her locked in the same cellar Caroline’s father had used to torture her in, had her strapped down to the same chair. Jeremy and Matt would bring in bottles of Caroline and Stefan’s blood to keep up her strength and Stefan and Caroline would take turns standing guard. 

It often lead to Caroline sinking to the floor, crying as silently as possible. 

“Please, _please_ , Caroline.” Elena pleaded, “I can’t tell what’s real anymore. I don’t know if this is real. I keep seeing…” 

Caroline had been bitten by a hybrid before, she knew what it was like. The pain, the agony, the visions of your worst fears coming to life before your eyes. Knowing there was no hope, just death waiting for you on the other side, the only question being how long it would take. 

“Please, Caroline, I just want it to end.” Elena said, her voice cracking. “It was already supposed to be over. It was supposed to end years ago, you know that.” 

“It’ll be okay,” Caroline forced her voice to remain calm and collected, “Damon and Bonnie are looking for the antidote, for something to slow it down at least, and I…I called Klaus. He’s sending one of his men with his blood. It should help counteract the poison and then we’ll have more time. It’ll be okay I promise.” 

It was a lie, but she can never remember if she knew that when she said it. 

 

\--

 

She thinks she sees Elena in the crowds sometimes. Katherine too. Dark curly hairy whipping behind them. Shy smiles and sly grins. Dark eyes drawing you to them. 

Caroline blinks and they disappear, girls and women in their place going about their lives. 

Some days, on her bad days, she finds them and leads them into alleys, into dark corners, and sinks her teeth in to their necks as punishment for their resemblance to people they can never be. 

They live, but she sometimes wishes they didn’t, that she didn’t have so much control, that she didn’t have a conscious niggling at her, that she didn’t have to worry about leaving a body trail. 

Caroline wonders what would happen if she ever happened upon the latest doppelganger, pictures what they would be like (she would have Katherine’s smile and Elena’s soulful brown eyes, she thinks, and an innocence neither of them were ever blessed with), and what she would do with them after she found them. 

The idea of a new Petrova doppelganger would be tantalizing to Klaus. Surely he and Elijah would go chasing after her. She wonders if even Stefan would be able to stay away, curiosity leading him to see her for himself. 

Caroline thinks that if she found her first she might snap her neck and leave her dead in an alley somewhere. Maybe tear out her heart and send her body to Klaus in New Orleans, a sealed coffin wrapped up like a gift. 

But she blinks and the thoughts disappears too, just like Elena, just like Katherine, just like all of those before them. 

 

\--

 

She senses someone else’s presence as soon as she enters her apartment. There was a familiar scent in the elevator, a cologne she knew but couldn’t place, that had set her on guard. 

Caroline probably should have run the moment she noticed the change, but she likes living there, refuses to give up the life she had forged for herself so easily. She had just managed to become one of the many curators at the museum. 

She puts her keys down in their bowl, loud enough to make her presence known and to pretend as though she doesn’t know she isn’t alone. Turns her back to pull off her coat and hang it on its hook, smoothing it down and looking it over. Its deep purple, like royalty would wear; she wears it almost every day. 

“I know you know I’m here, Caroline.” 

It’s Stefan’s voice. 

She had thought it would be Elijah standing across the room from her, maybe Klaus appearing beside her his hands on her hips, even a henchmen (several of them) sent to bring her to Klaus personally. She had heard rumors about Marcel, Klaus’ most trusted man, she was waiting to meet him any day now. 

Stefan hadn’t even been a blip on her radar. She had given up waiting for him to appear when she wanted him too. It had been better that way. Necessary. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Caroline says turning around to face him. 

She wants to hug him, she wants to run into his arms and cling to him and never let go. She wants to tell him stories of her travels, to tell him about Anastasia and the life she was building (she had friends and neighbors and a boss that didn’t like her but couldn’t fire her because sometimes compulsion was bad and sometimes it was a gift). She wanted to be able to hold on to this one piece of her past that was still left. 

“Really? That’s the hello I get.” He smiles. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Caroline says again shaking her head, “And you’re going to leave, just as soon as you tell me how you found me.” 

“I had a witch do a tracking spell.” He says. 

“Bonnie cast a spell making sure I couldn’t be found—”

“Bonnie died and so did her magic,” Stefan says, his face softening, “That spell no longer exists.” 

“So anyone can…” 

“The witch I used to find you, I had her do a new spell. Told her it was important, that someone was after you. I might have slightly exaggerated the situation but not the fact that Klaus was dangerous.” 

“Did you use his name?” 

“I _am_ smarter than that.” Stefan smiles. 

She missed that smile. Had seen it in boys and men all over the world, but it would fade away until she was staring back at brown haired boys with green eyes that looked nothing like Stefan at all. 

“You still should leave. Klaus wouldn’t like you here, you know that.” Caroline sighs. 

She should be angry, her life still centering around Klaus even without him there with her, but it’s hard to maintain such anger all the time. It ends up draining you of everything else. 

“Even more reason to do it,” Stefan says, “Come on, Anastasia, let me be your Demetri.” 

“I hate you for knowing that I even like that movie. For _remembering_ that movie.” She says.

“I always knew you wanted to be a princess.” Stefan smiles, “And here you are, Russian Princess Anastasia back from the dead.” 

She stares back at him blankly. 

“Just let me stay the night.” He says, “Tomorrow you can do away with me like any good royal would.” 

One night. One night of familiarity, of Stefan and her together again, of a life she once imagined. 

It was a bad idea. Caroline had so many bad ideas. 

She speeds in front of him, had his body against the wall and her teeth in his wrist before he could even blink. She drank until she could be sure she could taste the vervain. It tingled as it went down. 

“He didn’t send me here.” Stefan tells her as she looks up at him, his blood on her lips. 

“Someday he will,” Caroline says, “You told me that.” 

And then her lips met his. 

 

\--

 

Stefan’s hair was darker than she had seen before, not quite dark enough, but dark enough to pretend. She grasps on to it as she arches against him, panting someone else’s name. 

(She calls him Demetri, she has _some_ control, but she refuses to call him by his own name. Not now, not there.) 

He follows her lead, calls out _‘Anastasia’_ over and over again until it doesn’t sound like a word, like a name, and she starts to tune it out. He wraps his hand around her waist bringing her closer to him and rests his head in the crook of her neck. 

She wonders who he sees. 

His fingers reach lower, push just a little harder, and she gasps, pulling his mouth back to hers, her hands pulling harder on his dark brown hair. 

_“Demetri.”_ She breathes but she’s thinking of someone else. 

 

\--

Caroline wakes up before him, puts the coffee on and drinks a blood bag (two actually) to calm her nerves. 

It is not a romantic setting. She is not wearing his t-shirt, hasn’t prepared him breakfast or anything of the sort, and she has his suitcase beside the door and a print out of ticket he’ll find waiting for him at the airport. 

She thinks he’ll like Tokyo better than she did. 

Instead she is dressed for work, her hair swept up off her neck, her collar high and her boots coming up just below her knees. She is everything Anastasia is meant to be and Stefan holds no place in that life. 

Stefan comes out in just his boxers, not an unfamiliar sight, and goes to the coffee before he says anything. It’s laced with vervain but he doesn’t sputter when he drinks it. A testament to how far they’ve come. (How far they’ve fallen.) 

“You know this might be the worst greeting I’ve gotten in a while,” He says sipping his cup, “And I ran into Rebekah twenty years ago. She seemed mad at me for some reason and a mad Rebekah…” 

“I told you that you couldn’t stay here.” Caroline says holding her ground. “I’m sorry if you thought last night changed things.” 

Stefan chuckles, shaking his head. “Hoped. I _hoped_ it changed things. I never actually thought it did.” He says. “I’m just…running out of places, of _people_ , to run to.” 

They both were. 

“I know,” She says. 

He’s wearing his “Its Tuesday” face and it makes her smile. 

“But the two of us here together, he’s bound to find us that way.” Caroline says. 

Stefan doesn’t really have to run from Klaus, he chooses to instead. (All that deep-seated anger, it was best Klaus doesn’t find him anyways. She fears for her friend for what would happen if he did.) Stefan and Caroline aren’t what they once were, they never could be again, but he was still the most important person to her left. He would always be her best friend, years and continents couldn’t change that. 

He would always be the boy she loved since she was seventeen, would represent safety and self-control and sunshine, and some part of her would always want to run into his arms and never let go. 

“I wish I could protect you.” He says quietly. 

“I can protect myself.” She says, her voice strong. “You don’t have to worry about keeping your promise anymore.” 

“It became about a lot more than that a long time ago.” Stefan says. 

“I know,” Caroline nods, “And that’s why you have to leave.” 

She can’t have California anymore, she knows that. 

 

\--

 

Stefan found her still at her mother’s grave site. The workers were long since gone and she had shoved Klaus just hard enough to make her point until he had finally left. 

(It was the tears that had gotten to him in truth, she thought, the unstable girl who had just lost her mother, and he hadn’t known what to do with her. He preferred her happy, full of light and laughter, full of anger and snappy comments. Not this girl full of nothing but grief. The grief clouded the light he coveted so much.)

Caroline was leaning against her mother’s headstone, her dress covered in dirt and her hands tracing her mother’s name etched in stone. 

_Elizabeth Forbes  
Daughter, Mother, Protector, and Friend_

Caroline talked to her, like maybe she could still hear her. She was human and she knew she was not on the other side, but maybe heaven really did exist or some form of it did and she was there, in peace, listening to her. Caroline hoped she was. 

Liz Forbes deserved it after everything her daughter and Mystic Falls had put her through. 

Mostly she told her mother she was sorry she wasn’t there to protect her. She should have been. She would have been if things were different. But in the end Caroline wasn’t as different from the monster that had killed Liz as she wanted to be. 

“Caroline,” Stefan’s soft voice came. “Caroline, I know you know I’m here.” 

She had been ignoring him, hoping he would take the hint and go away. Even Klaus had had the decency to do that eventually. 

“I want to be alone.” 

“I know,” He said quietly. 

They stayed silent for a while and she only talked to her mother in her mind, hoping that it reached her still. _I’m sorry, mommy. I’m so so sorry._ Eventually she looked up at him, saw him standing across from her, a bag resting on his shoulder. 

“You’re leaving?” Her voice breaks as she asks the question. 

“ _We’re_ leaving.” He said with a shake of his head. 

“Stefan…” 

“Klaus gave us a year,” Stefan said, “A year for you to grieve privately with no prying eyes. He thinks I’ll be good enough protection for you; no vampires or witches or hybrids. Just us.” 

Klaus was dictating her life again, like he always did, but the idea of it seemed so appealing in the moment. One piece of familiarity to cling to when the world had come to an end so early. She hadn’t been prepared for it to end this early. Liz hadn’t even been able to be sad about not having grandchildren yet. 

“Where would we go?” Caroline asked. 

“Anywhere you want.” 

“California,” Caroline said, her mind made up before even she realized it, “I’ve never been there before.” 

 

\--

 

Caroline stays in Russia for a month after Stefan appeared. She knew his presence would change things, despite how careful he might have been. Salvatores always bring complications with them, no matter where they go. Caroline had been waiting to see what form this one would come in since she had driven Stefan to the airport. 

She comes home one day, her hackles up and prepared for the worst, but finds no one in the apartment with her. She’s paranoid, she knows she is, but with good reason and she can’t help feel that someone had been there. 

Caroline’s feelings are confirmed when she finds a package on her dining room table, wrapped in brown paper but with no address. (As if they needed one.) 

She takes the paper off carefully and slowly, lets it slide away and drop to the floor. Inside is a painting, reds and oranges and blues mixed together as they made up flames. In the middle is a woman, flowing blonde hair and blue eyes that hold your own, her head over her shoulder and hand outstretched beckoning someone to follow her. 

There’s no way to tell if the woman is trying to lead them into or out of hell. If she is Beatrice or the devil in disguise. 

Either way, Caroline can quite clearly recognize herself. 

What was it that Elijah had said? That her face was unforgettable to him now, that Klaus had made it so with his paintings and sketches. And God, for all she knew New Orleans had a statue of her now, something to show the newly turned vampires who to look for. 

Caroline had never asked to be made into a work of art, immortalized in more ways than one. 

(What Caroline wanted doesn’t matter though. She knew that.) 

It comes with a note. Elijah’s loopy hand writing that she shouldn’t recognize but does. 

_Your position in the art world is greatly admired by someone we both share in common._

It’s creepy and invasive and she wishes she could have lived her life not knowing Klaus was in it again. That he had found her again. She wishes she could live her life without looking over her shoulder. 

She laughs out loud at the thought, looking at the girl in the annoyingly beautiful painting, looking over her shoulder as well. 

 

\--

 

She goes back to Italy. 

Caroline had always liked it there, though she preferred Tuscany and Sicily above Rome. When she wants to explore the ancient gods she goes to Greece instead. Greek Gods were far more interesting to her, she especially liked Athena Goddess of Wisdom and Knowledge and Strength and all the things that Caroline wants and wishes she could be. 

(She stays away from stories and statues and paintings of Persephone and her decent into the underworld.

Pomegranate seeds are so easy to come by these days, in all forms.) 

She settles down in Sardinia, the island and the blue of the oceans winning out over everything else. She buys a new wardrobe full of bright colors and short skirts and white dress after white dress. She buys an extravagant apartment with a view of the sea and a balcony doors she leaves open most days to let the smell of the salty air in. She hangs the painting Elijah had sent her in the living room and she finally follows through with her plans, frames Elijah’s letter and hangs it above her bed. 

Spring will eventually leave and winter will always appear; it’s a reminder of that. Caroline needs that reminder. 

When she looks in the mirror she looks the most like Caroline Forbes as she has in years, but she stays Anastasia, stays someone new. She changes her last name but she keeps her accent and the history she had created for her. Anastasia takes to Italy, to Sardinia, just as well as Caroline had. 

She likes it there. Spends her days keeping busy, riding horses and exploring the beaches; such a big difference from Russia and she likes it. She spends her nights searching for something to keep her occupied, someone maybe. 

Eventually she finds him. 

 

\--

 

She’s at a bar, one she frequents often, in her short white dress and high heeled shoes (Anastasia 1.0 would be appalled to see her now, dressed in such revealing clothes, out on the prowl. Anastasia 2.0 doesn’t care. Not anymore.), when a glass of champagne is put down in front of her. 

She turns and there’s a man there, smiling with dimples and dark brown eyes that sparkle with mystery, “I thought you might be thirsty.” He says. 

He’s American and handsome and just a bit smug and it pulls at something in her stomach.

“I…like vodka.” She says, her accent and words perfectly done. She is Anastasia Ankudinov now. She barely speaks English, speaks only enough Italian to get by. 

She drinks the glass of champagne he put down in front of her anyways. Free drinks are always appreciated and Caroline misses the taste of champagne on her tongue.

“You’re Russian.” He says, but it sounds more like a question mingled with surprise. 

“You are very smart.” She says rolling her eyes at him. 

“I’m sorry, I just…I thought I was going to have to use my very bad Italian on you and now…Well, I don’t know any Russian.” 

Caroline laughs inwardly, but looks at him confusion. 

“I speak little English.” She says. “You make little…um…gist?” 

“Sense, you mean sense.” He says. 

“Okay, you make no sense.” She nods. 

He laughs, enjoying her bluntness, smiles at her with his eyes. “You know across the room, you looked like an angel.” He says, “I’m starting to think my eyes deceived me.” 

“Angel.” She repeats and then laughs, because he is a silly, silly man. “No angels here.” 

“No,” He says with a smile, “I guess not. I’m Joseph by the way. Please don’t call me Joe.” 

“I call you Joe?” She asks, confused expression on her face. 

“Joseph.” He emphasizes. 

“Anastasia.” She tells him and then holds up her empty champagne glass. “Another?” 

 

\--

 

Joseph was a photographer, not famous, but successful enough. His parents died when he was twenty and had left him enough money to follow his dreams. He had stuck it out and finished college though, because he knew that was what they would have wanted. He reminded her of Elena that way, chasing after the approval of ghosts. 

Anastasia didn’t understand his pain, not really, she had two distant parents who gave her enough money to live the life that she wanted until she eventually settled down with a suitable man. 

Caroline understood all too well the pain of watching the life drain out of her father’s eyes and seeing her mother’s dead body after a ten year absence from her life. (She had been older, with longer hair and wrinkles around her eyes, but she was still the same mother who had searched her closets for monsters and checked under her bed for the same thing. Some things never change.) 

But Caroline Forbes was buried underneath Anastasia, as far as she could be, so all she could do is nod and look regretful. 

Now he travels the world at his own pleasure, selling pictures to travel magazines and papers and even some galleries. He was a nomad of a type, never staying in one place too long. She liked that about him too. Or maybe she just liked the familiarity they shared, even if she would never voice it. 

He took pleasure in trying to teach her more English, was patient and kind, and laughs with her as she tries to form the words. Joseph tries to start her off easy, but Anastasia has trouble with pronunciation and when he writes things down she stares at him in confusion. 

Sometimes she calls him Joe just to bother him. It makes her laugh and eventually he catches on to what she’s doing and he tackles her to the bed. 

“You are most definitely not an angel.” He tells her. 

“Angel I am not,” Caroline agrees, “I am…more.” 

Anastasia is nothing if not confident. 

Joseph laughs, his hands trailing her side. “I should call you my own personal devil.” 

“Чертенок на плече” _(the little devil on your shoulder)_ , she smiles. 

“See, you even speak to me in tongues, making me do all kinds of things.” His head dips, his tongue trailing down her neck, and she mewls against him. 

Some things don’t need translating.

 

\--

 

He loves to take pictures of her. Obsesses over it really. Calls her his muse. 

“Musa?” She repeats, cocking her head to the left. 

“You inspire me.” Joseph says, “Make me want…You make me want too many things.” 

She lets him take the pictures, compels him to never show them to anyone else and to give them to her when it’s all over. But she lets him take them, takes that risk. Because being his muse seems far less scary than being someone else’s. 

Being his muse didn’t make her feel anything other than beautiful. Anastasia preened under the idea of it and Caroline smiled shyly at the thought. 

Once upon a time, this would have been all she had ever wanted. 

Now she just knows eventually it will end and she’ll be left with a choice. Keep the photos hidden in a box or burn them until all that was left was ash. 

Joseph is a good photographer, he deserved all his success earned the hard way on all accounts. She thinks she’ll keep a few at least. 

 

\--

 

Caroline wakes up to an empty bed, though she can hear Joseph’s heartbeat somewhere in the apartment. She sits up, pulling the sheets tighter to her chest; she can hear him in the living room, not in the bathroom or even the balcony like she had expected. 

She drags the sheets behind her, finds him standing in the living room staring at the painting on the wall.

“I see I’m not the first person who considered you their muse.” He says, his eyes still locked on to the painting. 

They had always gone to his hotel room before, but tonight she had let him come back there, it was closer to the bar and they had both had too much to drink. 

“There’s a difference,” She says, “He never bothered asking, he just painted it. You always ask.” 

He turns to look at her, his eyes widening slightly. “Your English was perfect.” 

“I know.” She says stepping closer to him until she was right in front of him, her hand on his face and her eyes locked on his, “And tomorrow, you’ll forget everything about this.” 

She kisses him then, harshly and yet sadly, because she tastes the goodbye in it. Knows the end is coming. 

Caroline Forbes has always hated endings. 

 

\--

 

Caroline woke up with her arms around Stefan’s pillow where he was supposed to be, sunlight poking through the window and dancing around the room and over her body, giving the illusion of warmth. They had curtains, but they barely used them since they had decided to stay there permanently. 

She could smell pancakes in the kitchen, so she thought she’d probably forgive him for not being there when she woke up. 

She grabbed one of his button down shirts from the floor and put it on over her underwear and headed towards food. She found Stefan setting the table, his hair still mussed from sleep and flour on his hands. 

“You make quite the housewife.” Caroline smiled from the doorway. 

His head snapped up as he looked at her, taking her in. “Well, one of us had to be good at it.” 

“Hey! I’m a damn good cook, thank you. I just don’t wear the aprons like you.” She said, taking her seat at the table. She noticed that he had put her pancakes on her plate already, had set out her favorite syrup and that there was a bowl of strawberries next to that. But there was nothing on his own plate. 

“Did you already eat?” She asked. 

He nodded absently, “You took longer to wake up than I expected.” 

Stefan went back into the kitchen, cleaning up and washing the dishes, as she shrugged and dug into her food. Stefan was an amazing cook and maybe he was right, he did cook more than her, but it wasn’t her fault he had more time to learn to cook than her, time to study it and travel to exotic places to learn new things. She wouldn’t be Caroline Forbes if she didn’t take advantage of an attractive man wanting to cook for her. 

“These were amazing.” She said bring her plate into the kitchen. “I’m thinking they might even deserve some rewarding.” 

She smiled dazzlingly at him, placing her plate down, and letting his shirt slide off her shoulder as she leaned around him. “I’m thinking a shower before we head out to the farmer’s market. A really _long_ shower.” 

Stefan smiled back but it was forced. “We’re not going to the farmer’s market.”

“We always go on Sundays.” Caroline said, suddenly confused. They were that picturesque couple that other couples hated. (Minus the blood lust of course.) She kind of loved that about them. 

“I know, but…” He looked away, out the window and at the waves crashing against the beach. When he looked up his face was far more determined, blank of the emotions she was used to seeing there. “Our time is up.” 

“What, did this suddenly become a therapy session?” 

“Klaus gave us a year.” Stefan said, the emotion creeping back in just a bit, “I talked him into giving us a bit longer than that, so you wouldn’t have to be alone on the anniversary of your mother’s death. But the time he gave us, it’s up.” 

Caroline shook her head, “I don’t care what he says, you know. He doesn’t get to—”

“He does.” Stefan said. “Midnight tonight, I make a call. It doesn’t matter if I like it or not, it doesn’t matter that I don’t want this to end either. I doesn’t matter that I…None of it matters. Midnight tonight it all ends and I make that call and he knows where you are.” 

It all comes crashing down on her, the truth of it all. “He compelled you.” 

“I had stopped taking vervain, I didn’t think…It’s not a mistake I’m going to make again, I promise, but I can’t change what happened.” 

“He compelled you.” Caroline repeated. 

“To come with you, to protect you from anything that might hurt you, to call him and tell him when time was up. But that’s it, Caroline.” He took a step closer to her, his hands grasping her own, and she realized at some point she had started backing away from him slowly. 

“Everything else, I promise, it was real.” Stefan said, “Everything that happened between us was real.” 

“But only because he let us—”

“No, you can’t think of it that way.” He shook his head, his hand tightening around her own. “We got this time together, that we would never have gotten if you had run away again. I wouldn’t have…Please, don’t let him take this away from me too.” 

Caroline nodded her head, because she didn’t blame him, she didn’t, but she still hated the idea that Klaus was still there somewhere in the background. That he would always be. 

“I don’t make the call until midnight.” Stefan said, “And then I have to tell him where we are. Caroline, do you understand?” 

“I…”

“Caroline, _do you understand?_ ” 

The breakfast just for her, the night before when he had been so gentle, tracing her body like he was afraid he would forget it, the days before spent laughing and remembering, and splashing in the ocean water. Nothing that wasn’t just the two of them. 

It had been so nice, wonderful even, and she wouldn’t forget it. 

Stefan didn’t even flinch as her hands disappeared from his own and reached up to his neck, snapping it with a crack that should have been loud enough for the neighbors to hear it. 

She turned around and went back to their room and packed her bag as the tears fell. Once upon a time, Caroline had been used to this, but Stefan and the last year had changed that. 

 

\--

 

When Joseph woke up, her clothes were already packed. Divided into Anastasia’s party clothes that she would most likely sell and the rest that she would donate. That bag was significantly smaller. She didn’t need to take them with her, but leaving them behind would just be another lead for someone to follow, another thing for someone to question. 

Even if it was just Anastasia that went missing, Caroline’s description would be beside her. 

“What are you doing?” Joseph asks, his voice rough from sleep. 

“Packing.” She says, carefully placing one of her nicer dresses into the bag, before zipping it up. 

Caroline moved around the room and to the bed, sitting down beside him. 

“You’re leaving?” He asks, his eyes still clouded with confusion. 

They were speaking English and he hadn’t even noticed yet. 

She kissed his lips gently, before pulling away and staring into his eyes, “You’re going to take me to your studio, show me all the pictures you’ve kept hidden of me. Of us. And you aren’t going to ask questions about what’s going on. Okay?” 

He nods his head, his eyes glazed over, and she closes her own. 

Here came goodbye. 

 

\--

 

There are hundreds of pictures. Maybe more even. Joseph was never without his camera no matter where they went. 

They would spend days at the beach, playing in the water and walking in the sand, and he would document it all. He would tell her to hold still as the light caught her hair just right spinning it into gold, he would tell her to act natural only to make laugh. He would have her strike different poses and she would pull him into the frame last minute kissing him and only some of the time did they make it into the picture. 

“Do you have a favorite?” She asks looking over them all. 

“This one,” He says pointing. 

It’s a close up, her hair illuminated by the light of the sun behind her. She looks golden as her hair whips across her face. 

( _“You’re full of light.”_ Klaus had told her. 

Caroline hopes someday that light will blind him, burn him into ashes.) 

It’s beautiful. A moment trapped in time where she was happy and carefree _and Anastasia._ She was going to miss that, miss being Anastasia, light hearted and with nothing to fear. 

“You can’t keep that, I’m sorry.” She says. 

She looks through them, finds a few that don’t show her face, and leaves them in his hands. 

“You’re going to do great things,” she tells him after she’s compelled him to forget about her, to destroy any photos he might find of her. 

And then she walks away. 

 

\--

 

She burns most of the photos. Goes through them one by one, remembering and aching, and then watching them burn. 

Caroline remembers Elena burning her house down in anger and grief. Remembers an amnesiac Stefan burning his journals, refusing to be the person they said he was. Remembers Bonnie burning the clothes she had died in. 

It took years, so many of them, but she guessed it was finally her turn to burn her life down to ashes. Or parts of it anyways. 

She keeps some of the photos, piled in a box that she’ll send to her storage locker, memories she doesn’t want to lose. She had quite enjoyed her time as Anastasia. 

Others she keeps for specific reasons. 

When the rest of her packing is done she is left with three items on the table, three packages. All addressed to Originals. 

She sends Klaus’ painting back to him in pieces, long jagged nail marks breaking the seams of the canvas. Shredding it into pieces like a puzzle to be put together. Caroline wonders how long it will take for him to realize what it is. If he’ll know how she had gotten it. 

She sends certain pictures she kept from Joseph to Elijah. Words written on the back and sometimes the front, taunting him. 

_Come and find me._

_I’m waiting for you._

_Don’t you miss me?_

_Is it really so hard to find me?_

Caroline knows better than to taunt Originals, really she does. But sometimes, she’s passed caring. Some days she almost wants it to end. Other days she would give anything for the promise that Klaus would never enter her life again. 

(She had given Joseph specific instructions before she had disappeared. There was a picture from when he had talked her into visiting Rome. He had taken a picture of a crowd on the street, Caroline among the many people. 

She had told him to get it published. Anywhere and as many places that would take it. 

It was a long shot it would get back to Klaus, but Caroline hoped it did. 

_Paris, Rome, Tokyo_ —She didn’t need Klaus to get there, she never had.) 

She sends Rebekah a pair of expensive Italian shoes she had never worn. She knew she was no longer in New Orleans, but she thought that they would get to her eventually. And even if they didn’t, it still only seemed fair considering she was sending things to both her brothers. 

And she thinks Rebekah would like the shoes. Perhaps Elijah could deliver them in between Klaus’s errands. 

Caroline hops on the first plane to the states and leaves. Says goodbye to Italy and the life she could have continued living. That in a different life maybe could have lasted forever. 

Caroline hated goodbyes, they made her bitter. 

 

\--

 

Caroline finds herself in Alaric’s classroom. All of the classrooms look the same really in Mystic Falls High; same desks and chairs, same blackboard and positioning, and windows that don’t open. (An illusion of freedom and a fire hazard she imagined all wrapped up in one.) 

But Alaric’s classroom smelled liked vervain her senior year, so she can always separate it from the rest. She doesn’t need to look for things like globes or maps or great tombs of battles past. 

Elena’s sitting on top of his desk across from her. She’s in a tight leather skirt that reaches her knees but slits up the side as she crosses and dangles her legs over the side. Her shirt is black too, buttoned up but with enough buttons open but to reveal lace underneath. 

Caroline wonders when exactly her friend had turned into a dominatrix. The pointer in her hand, it didn’t help the look. 

“You didn’t turn your humanity off again, did you?” Caroline asks, tilting her head to take it all in. 

The other girl giggles and that’s when it snaps into place. It’s Katherine, not Elena. 

“You know it doesn’t matter how many times I do it, pretending to be Elena never gets old.” Katherine smirks at her. 

Caroline sighs. 

“Well at least now the outfit makes sense.” She mutters. 

Katherine giggles again, reaching over and adding glasses to her ensemble. “What you don’t think I look like a good little teacher?” 

“Not the kind you’d want to send your kids to.” 

“Well, I’m not here to teach sticky little snotty nosed kids,” She wrinkles her nose, “I’m here to teach _you._ ” 

“Teach me what exactly?” 

“History.” She hops of the desk and slams her pointer against the chalkboard. 

**_History 101_ **

“You’re going to teach me about history?” Caroline scoffs. “Well, I guess you did live through enough of it.” 

Katherine glares at her over her black frames, “I don’t plan on teaching you about the Civil War or the Nazis. I have a whole different lesson plan for you.” 

When she turns back to the chalkboard, the words have changed. In their place is the names of the Originals. 

_Mikael_

_Esther_

_Finn_

_Elijah_

_Klaus_

_Rebekah_

_Kol_

“Now, Finn and Kol are non-factors.” Katherine says, “Dead as doornails, with Elena and the rest of your friends to thank. Klaus took care of Mikael himself, which was kind of a shame, considering the chunk of my neck he took out before we could use him. And Esther is no more a threat than any of the other witches on the other side. I think you’ll be okay there. They don’t like her very much.”

Caroline didn’t blame them and Katherine nodded in agreement. 

“So who does that leave us with, class?” 

“Rebekah, Elijah, and Klaus.” Elena’s voice comes from behind her. 

Caroline snaps around and takes her in, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, her converses on her feet, and her hair straight. Just like when they were in high school.

“Very good,” Katherine says, “I’d give you points, if you know, I liked you.” 

Elena rolls her eyes and Caroline finds herself smiling. 

“Rebekah’s a non-factor too. She’s off finally living life as she deserves. The worst she’ll do to you is insult your taste.” 

Caroline looks down at the sundress she’s wearing and makes a face. It had been years since she had worn one. 

“You picked it,” Katherine shrugs. “Anyways, that leaves us with Klaus and Elijah. The big bads of the Original family. But then you know that.” 

“Which makes me wonder why we’re talking about it.” Caroline says aggravated. She could still smell vervain and the classroom seemed to be getting smaller the longer Katherine talked. 

“We thought you might need a reminder.” Elena says. 

“They killed us both, we have experience.” Katherine says, “Well actually Elena and Stefan killed me in the end, but I never would have ended up a vampire in the first place if it wasn’t for Klaus and that whole spilling my blood over a stupid rock thing.” 

“I know better than to trust him.” 

“Maybe. But do you know better than to trust Elijah?” Katherine asks, her pointer going to his name on the board. The other names on the blackboard had been crossed out, only Elijah and Klaus remained. 

She is met with silence because Caroline doesn’t know what the answer is. 

“Elijah is an honorable man.” Elena speaks up behind her. 

“Not to mention a fabulous kisser.” Katherine says with a wistful sigh. “I do miss that part of our relationship.” 

“Bad mental images.” Caroline says. 

“But what do _you_ know about him, Caroline?” Katherine asks, stepping up to her desk and leaning down like Mr. Tanner did when he was trying to intimidate students. 

“I haven’t spent as much time with him as you did.” She says. 

Katherine smiles again, wickedly. 

“But you _have_ spent time with him. He’s your ally against Klaus. He warns you when he’s coming and he is _always_ coming. We all know that. It’s why you keep running, it’s why I did. Klaus never stops. And you’re scared of what will happen when he finds you.” 

“Are we talking about me or you?” Caroline asks, bitch tone out in full force. 

“Oh, sweetie, I knew what would happen to me when Klaus found me. Elena did too. Death and destruction, torture for sure.” Katherine smiles, “It’s why I ran and why Elena stayed, like the good little girl she was. You, Caroline, you have no idea what will finally happen when Klaus finds you. And you hate that.” 

She turns away, back to the board, singing about Caroline Forbes the control freak hopped up on blood and her own accomplishments. 

Her pointer hit the blackboard again, it had regressed to what it had said in the beginning: _**HISTORY 101.**_

“Now class, tell me what we know.” 

“Elijah always wants what his brother has.” Elena’s voice comes. “All siblings secretly do.” 

“Tatia, me, Elena…and the song plays on. And now, you belong to Klaus,” Katherine says, there’s almost sympathy in her voice. “Where does that leave you?” 

 

\--

 

Caroline jerks awake on the plane. Wrapped up in a blanket, her feet spread over the seat next to her. Over the intercom she can hear one of the Stewardess’s telling them to buckle their seatbelts and prepare to land. 

Caroline kicks the blanket away, blinking awake slowly.

“Are you okay?” One of the other passengers asks. 

He was an older gentleman, dressed in a suit, screaming of too much money. He had been watching her since she had boarded the plane. Whether he thought she was pretty or if he was wondering how she had managed first class, she wasn’t really sure. But she paid enough attention to assess him as a threat. 

(He wasn’t one. Or at least not to a supernatural one.) 

“You got any of those little things of alcohol on you?” She asks. 

He laughs, pulls out a bottle from his shirt pocket. “I was saving it in case it all went bad.” 

He passes it over anyways. 

“Thanks,” She says. 

She swallows it down easily, scotch had stopped burning a long time ago, but it doesn’t ease the pain in the back of her head or the echoes of a dead woman’s words in her head. 

“I’d be happy to buy you some more once we land,” He says, “I travel a lot, Chicago’s airport has a surprisingly good bar.” 

“I could definitely use a drink.” Caroline smirks at him. 

(He wasn’t a threat, he should have better assessed that she was one.) 

 

\--

 

Caroline gets a job a greasy dinner that makes her wear a teal uniform that clashes with her skin tone. Though she guesses she should be thankful it’s not orange. Her name tag reads ‘Anne’ because after she first got turned she had watched Buffy over and over looking for answers to her own life in a fictional world. 

(It hadn’t worked, but she had overly connected with Buffy’s character in that blonde, just wants to be a cheerleader, never asked for any of this, wasn’t given a choice kind of a way.) 

She moves into the apartment that Stefan still keep there. Spends her days off cleaning it and making it more livable. Caroline doesn’t know the last time he was there (not since their Mystic Falls days) but it is no longer fit for the living. It does have a nice stock of alcohol though. Her time off is spent blaring music that makes her neighbors hate her and dancing around the house cleaning and drinking the good stuff. 

Caroline doesn’t know why she ended up there. In this city or this apartment. 

She was the one to push Stefan away, not the other way around. (He had been reaching out, practically clinging to her in his own quiet way, and she had handed him a ticket to Tokyo in return. Who was the monster there? The Ripper in the room? She thought she knew the answer.) It was better though; she knew that. They both did. 

But she still sits in his apartment night after night, drinking his alcohol and sometimes thinking about his eyes or his smile, sometimes staring at his lists of victims on his wall. 

He had burned all his diaries, but there was still a written history of his past in this place. 

Some days she thinks of making her own list. There would be friends on it and complete strangers. Her mother. 

The last name on it will be her own. 

(She had killed Caroline Forbes a long time ago.) 

\--

 

Klaus’s blood had gotten there too late. 

She was never sure if it was some clever ploy, hoping the last remaining Petrova doppelganger that defied him would die an agonizing death, or if it was just coincidence. Caroline had spent years wondering and had never come up with an answer. 

Induced by a werewolf venom rage Elena had broken out of her chains, knocked Jeremy unconscious and overpowered Stefan, leaving him with a hole in his stomach where she had shoved her hand in too deep. 

She had left him alive, untouched by her fangs, but with his blood on her hands she went searching for more. 

Caroline had found Stefan, one of Klaus’s minions on her heels with the Klaus’ blood in his hands, and it had all gone to hell from there. 

Elena had left a trail of bodies in her wake, mostly human, some vampires they didn’t even know resided so close to home. Andre (Klaus’ henchman of the hour) had called Klaus right away, filling him in on what had happened. Caroline had heard the words _‘take care of the problem’_ before she had snapped the vampire’s neck. 

Caroline and Stefan had chained him to the chair they had strapped Elena to, trying to prevent Klaus’ orders from being followed out for as long as possible. They had his blood, they had a cure of some form and it was only a matter of time before they fixed everything. 

Elena Gilbert never died, not permanently, it wasn’t in her DNA. She was a survivor and she would survive this too. 

They were wrong. Caroline was always wrong. 

 

\--

 

Caroline runs into Rebekah on the streets walking home from her last shift. 

It was a double shift filled with shitty customers who called her demeaning names in the guise of compliments and even shittier tips. She smelled like greasy burgers and burnt French Fries and she was holding a bag of onion rings she planned to eat later, the grease already seeping into the bag. 

Rebekah smirks as she looks her up and down, and Caroline wants to slap her. Turnabout is fair play after all.

“Of all the cities in all the world,” Rebekah says, smirk still firmly in place. 

Caroline has heard about the rift between brother and sister, the new life Rebekah had formed for herself outside of her brothers’ control. Caroline doubts that she will turn her in, but she doesn’t know for sure. 

“What can I say, the windy city just spoke to me?” Caroline says, “What are you doing in this part of town? Aren’t you getting your boots dirty?” 

“Looking for food.” Rebekah says and Caroline knows she’s not talking about the kind she still has grasped in her hands. “Sometimes a good chase down an alleyway releases all the tension in your back. But now that I’ve found you…How about a drink?” 

“Of the alcohol or blood variety?” Caroline asks. She hasn’t drunken from a human since the man on the plane. (Vernon Thomas, his obituary had told her. She had left him alive, but he died anyways. Blood loss. She had told him to eat something healthy, apparently he hadn’t listened.) 

“Let’s start with the alcohol and see where the night takes us,” Rebekah smiles. 

 

\--

 

They agree to meet at a bar in downtown, after Caroline has had the chance to shower and change. Rebekah had insisted on it and Caroline had thrown her onion rings at her, hoping it left a stain on her shiny white blouse. 

But Caroline preferred it anyways. She only liked wearing the uniform when she was in character and she couldn’t be in character when she was with Rebekah. Or at least not the character of Anne. 

She would have to put on the face of Caroline Forbes again, figure out if that was all it was or not. 

Caroline showered, her favorite part of the day recently, relaxed a little as the water sprayed down on her, and changed into her best outfit and boots. 

When she found Rebekah, she still felt underdressed. Originals had a tendency to bring out all of her insecurities, Rebekah was no exception.

“I was staring to think you had skipped town already.” Rebekah says as Caroline slides into the seat beside her. “That is your MO after all.” 

“You’re not the one I’m running from and I kind of figured if anyone understood the urge, it would be you.” Caroline says. 

She flags down the waiter and orders a martini and a lot of shots, because she knows this is a night that will require enough alcohol to actually give them both a buzz. The waiter sits the shot glasses before them, as well as the martini, and leaves the bottle of tequila. 

He’s not her type, but Caroline thinks she would sleep with him for that alone. 

But maybe that was the loneliness talking. Most of her time was spent at the diner, and she had friends, but no one to come home to, no one to check up on anymore or call late at night over trivial things. Mostly she and the other waitresses bonded over the repulsiveness of some of the customers. 

“I got the shoes you sent,” Rebekah says, “They were surprisingly lovely.” 

“If it makes you feel better, I can tell you the shop girl helped me pick them out.” Caroline snarks. 

“No need, you do have good taste in some things,’” Rebekah says, “I know that. I just don’t like saying it.” 

She crinkles her face in distaste, as if the words were fowl in her mouth, and takes a quick shot. 

“I was surprised you sent me anything at all.” 

“I sent packages for your brothers, it only seemed fair. Besides I wasn’t using them.” Caroline shrugged, downing her own shot. 

She missed the days alcohol burned going down, gave her a feeling that was new and powerful, instead of just being a reminder of what and who she was now. 

But then, if she had stayed human, maybe she would have drunk just as much, become another Carol Lockwood, glass always in hand and vodka hidden in her lemonade at social functions, and it wouldn’t have been all that different. She might have even ended up a Lockwood herself. 

“I heard about that,” Rebekah says with a laugh, “You sent Klaus confetti in the form of his own work. God, I should have thought of that myself.” 

She seems positively delighted at the idea of it, laughing with a full blown smile that Caroline had never seen directed her way. 

“And in a shoe box to boot. I wish I could have seen his face when he realized what it was.” 

“Elijah told you?” Caroline asks cautiously. She doesn’t know what Rebekah knows about her relationship, or whatever it was, with Elijah and she doesn’t want anything to slip. 

“Yes, though he didn’t find it quite as amusing as I did.” Rebekah says, “Apparently Klaus flew into a rage, destroying all of the artwork he was working on. Even the ones that _didn’t_ include you.” 

Caroline got a vindictive pleasure out of it, a victory of sorts that she could still hurt him as much as he continued to hurt her. 

“Apparently he slashed them all up and threw them into the streets; made a big ruckus.” Rebekah continues, “I’m almost sad I missed it.” 

The almost represents a lot that Rebekah will never say out loud. Not to Caroline. But Caroline thinks that it means she can trust that Rebekah won’t tell her brother about her fantastic find in the Windy City in the near future. 

“Personally, I think it had more to do with the gift you sent Elijah.” Rebekah says, her eyes locking with hers, “Though he never told me what he received.” 

A taunt, but Caroline doesn’t tell her that. 

“Just some pictures of my time in Italy, I thought he might appreciate them,” Caroline shrugs non-committedly. The lie slips out easily and she thinks that the real Caroline Forbes really has been replaced by this act; the old one could never get by so easily with deception. “And I liked the idea of Klaus not being the only one to get a gift. It seemed…” 

“Poetic?” Rebekah suggests. 

“Justified.” Caroline smiles. 

They down two more shots and she thinks they understand each other a little better somehow. 

 

\--

 

“So how’d you end up here?” Caroline asks, stirring the olives in her martini. She’s barely touched it, but she likes having it there for something to do with her hands. 

“I always liked Chicago, and well, I wondered what it would be like without my brother’s interference or scheming.” 

“What do you think of it so far?” 

“I like it, but sometimes it’s dreadfully boring.” Rebekah sighs. “It was more fun in the twenties, when St—it was more fun the first time around.” 

“Well, you can always look for some other place to live, somewhere less tainted with memories.” 

“Trying to get rid of me already?” Rebekah laughs. As though Caroline could actually accomplish that task. 

“No,” Caroline shakes her head, “I just think despite all of the horrible things you’ve done, and there have been a lot, you deserve a chance to be happy. Everyone does. If Chicago doesn’t make you happy, if it’s too different, go find someplace else that does make you happy.” 

“Says the girl that makes Katerina Petrova look like an amateur when it comes to running. Never staying in one place too long, always altering everyone’s memories so they don’t even remember you were there.”

“I’ve stayed some places for a while.” Caroline says. She had been certain people for extended times too. “But your brother always chased me away.” 

“Which one?” Rebekah asks and she seems genuinely curious. 

“Both of them.” Caroline says and she takes another shot.

 

\--

 

Rebekah shows up in her doorway a few days later. Caroline is dressed in her uniform, her hair in one long braid to the side, with sneakers on her feet; ready for work. 

“That really is an unflattering color on you.” Rebekah says peeking behind her to see what Caroline had done to Stefan’s apartment. 

There weren’t many changes, she had cleaned more than anything, scrubbed all traces of blood away and chased down every dust bunny and spider that thought they could hide from her. Everything else, she had kept intact. (She hadn’t known Stefan back then, knew she wouldn’t have wanted to, but it still felt wrong to change things. Though she had organized his books and lugged in a refrigerator. He could thank her for that later.) 

She doesn’t bother asking Rebekah how she knew Caroline was staying there. 

“Is there a reason you’re here?” 

There’s something in their interactions that make her think of all those years ago, the two of them on cheer squad together, sometimes bickering and sometimes working together to make the routines perfect. It was an odd sense of déjà vu she wasn’t sure she liked. 

“I was bored, so I decided we’re going shopping.” Rebekah says. 

Caroline scoffs, rolling her eyes just to make her point further. “I’m going to work.” She tells her. 

“I already compelled your boss. You’ll get whatever measly pay your supposed get for your day’s work and a little extra for tips. Don’t worry, he won’t miss it. He skims off the top.” 

“I know,” Caroline sighs. She knows her boss is not the best of men, certainly not perfect, but he’s nicer than John from Kansas, always taking in strays who needed the money. She doesn’t mind working for him. 

“So, we have all day to spend in all the fabulous stores this city has to offer.” Rebekah grins. 

Caroline feels like she should probably fight it, or at least act like she was, but it seems simpler to give in. 

But maybe that’s just the loneliness talking again. 

 

\--

 

Shopping with Rebekah is more tiring than she expected. And this is from Caroline Forbes, shopaholic, queen of every store in Mystic Falls and all the surrounding areas, and a woman who has bought a new wardrobe every time she has changed homes, changed lives. 

Still Rebekah was exhausting. And bossy. And so very particular about everything. 

She demanded that Caroline try things on and then judged them, sometimes incredibly harshly, belittling the staff that had picked them out. She had Caroline watch as she tried on dress after dress. 

“I’m going through a dress phase.” Rebekah had said. “All I want to wear is dresses. I think I’m finally fully adjusting to this whole revealing clothing thing that happened when my brother daggered me.” 

“Well, you have nice legs, so it works.” Caroline had said sipping at her champagne. 

“I quite think so.” Rebekah said before disappearing into the changing rooms again. 

They continued on, store after store, and a compelled driver taking their bags from them and storing them God knew where. They had come in a limousine (and Caroline had felt like they were in some weird version of Pretty Woman, the original or the remake), but even so, she didn’t know where it all went. 

Rebekah paid for it all, a black credit card appearing in her hands at just the right moment, and only allowing Caroline to buy coffee for them both when Caroline started complaining about feeling drained. Caroline had protested of course, she had money, plenty of it, despite her job. She didn’t need someone to take care of her. But Rebekah had just rolled her eyes and said the least she was doing was taking care of her, she was just buying things she liked. Things that would just happen to belong to Caroline when this was all over, but that didn’t seem to bother her. 

Eventually, the shops started to close, and Rebekah seemed content with what she had gotten done for the day. She had her driver drop off Caroline and her bags at Stefan’s old apartment and had followed Caroline up the stairs. 

Caroline was still trying to sort through bags when Rebekah came back into the room with a bottle of Stefan’s wine. 

“You know I used to spend a lot of time with Stefan here.” Rebekah says, somehow managing to gracefully flop down into one of the arm chairs. “Before Nik found out about him. This reminds me a little of that now.” 

All of her class, and looking down at others, and Rebekah took a swig right out of the wine bottle. Caroline couldn’t help but giggle to herself. 

“He said the two of you ran into each other a while ago, was it here?” Caroline asks. She gives up her hopes of sorting for the night and swipes the bottle out of Rebekah’s hands, taking a swig of her own. It was old, vintage, and tasted just right. 

“No, Australia of all places. In some bar. Something out of a movie, I suppose.” 

“He said he didn’t get the best reception.” 

“I might have shoved a metal rod through his stomach,” Rebekah shrugs, “But it’s not like it was wooden or anything. When did you see him?”

“A little while ago. Years maybe by now, I don’t know. I don’t really keep calendars.” Caroline takes another drink before passing it back to the other girl, “I saved him the metal bar, gave him a plane ticket instead. Told him he couldn’t stay.” 

“Worse, some would say.” 

“Self-preservation others would say.” Caroline says. She can almost hear Katherine saying the words. 

( _“Better you die than I.”_ ) 

“If you chased him away, why are you here?” Rebekah asks. 

“Because I’m running out of people to run to.” Caroline repeats Stefan words, “I’m…I don’t have a home anymore. This…it seemed like the best option at the time.” 

“Stefan is your home now.” Rebekah says and Caroline expects it to be bitter, catty even, to hide the jealousy underneath. But mostly there is just understanding. 

“He’s the closest thing I have left.” Caroline says grabbing the bottle and making a mocking movement of a toast towards her. “But you know how they say you can’t go home again.” 

 

\--

 

Rebekah spends the night, like some twisted parody of a sleepover two seventeen year old girls would have. Sneaking booze and talking about boys. She hogs the covers, and pulls at the sheets, and Caroline doesn’t doze off until somewhere around three. 

When she wakes up, Rebekah is gone. No note on the pillow telling her to expect her back eventually, and Caroline wonders if she will ever see her again. 

Caroline gets up, showers, puts on her uniform and heads to work. She goes on auto pilot, her false grin turned on automatically when she had arrived, and she has the menu memorized so it’s easy to keep track of everyone’s orders. Her feet hurt by the end of the day and she can only imagine the human waitresses that work there and how they must ache and she feels a little bad as she walks home. 

When she unlocks her doors and comes inside, it is just as empty as she has left it. Bags still in the corner, clothing waiting to be hung in her closest in a color coded fashion. But no Rebekah. 

Caroline decides she will never see her again. Or at least not any time soon. 

She puts thoughts of Rebekah and her brothers behind her, showers, and then starts to redo her closet to make room for all her new purchases. 

 

\--

 

Almost a month later, Rebekah shows up on her doorstep again. 

“I’ve decided to take you advice.” She says. 

“Umm…What advice exactly?” Caroline blinks at her. She had been sleeping, after a double shift, and she wasn’t exactly fully awake yet. 

“I’m going someplace else, somewhere with less history, someplace to make me happier.” 

“I’m glad,” Caroline says and she means it, she really does. 

“If you see Stefan, you’ll tell him I’m sorry about the rod.” 

“And if you see him, tell I’m sorry I wouldn’t let him stay longer. That I—just tell him I’m sorry.” 

Rebekah nods. 

“He’ll find you eventually, it’s just who my brother is.” Rebekah says quietly, her tone softening even more. “Just be prepared for it when it happens.” 

“I am.” 

Rebekah laughs softly. “Back in the day, I could always spot a liar, Stefan especially. I think he might have rubbed off on you.” 

She hands Caroline a piece of paper with a list of numbers scribbled on it. “If you need it…There’s a witch on there, drop my name and she’ll help you, even if it’s my brother you need help from. The other two numbers are mine and Elijah’s. I can’t promise I’ll keep this phone but it’s been years since Elijah has changed his number. If you need something, he’ll protect you.” 

“You sound so sure.” 

“He was the one who brought me the shoes.” Rebekah smiles. 

 

\--

Rebekah leaves and Caroline returns to Stefan’s bedroom (it’s still Stefan’s, the Ripper’s even, never hers), and curls up in bed. 

She wishes sleep would return but she knows it won’t. 

She thinks about Rebekah and her chase for happily ever after, of the years she sought it out only for Klaus to crush her dreams every time. Of Stefan, who Klaus used and abused in the name of friendship, who erased their relationship from existence at his convenience. 

Caroline thinks about how after all of that, Rebekah is still somehow looking for a happy ending. Still believes in one. 

Once upon a time, Caroline did too. 

She thought she had found it in California. Some twisted version of what she had always wanted but didn’t deserve. That she only got by default, but was still more perfect than anything that had come before it. The way Stefan had made it all go away, made everything that was wrong just disappear. 

And then Klaus had torn it apart too. 

He was good at that. 

She wondered if it would take her a thousand years like Rebekah to finally escape his hold, to finally be granted freedom. _True_ freedom. 

Caroline wondered if she could hold out that long. 

 

\--

 

It was an experiment. 

Not a suicide attempt or a way to end it all. Not even an act of vengeance to ensure Klaus never truly got what he wanted. 

(Though admittedly, all of those things crossed her mind as she considered it; but Caroline Forbes was a survivor and she wanted to live. She always had.)

She was hidden in a grove of trees when she took off her ring slowly, holding it tightly in her hand. She felt naked without it on her finger, weak and vulnerable. She dropped it to the ground and waited, listened, breathed. 

Then she stepped forward into the sunlight. 

Caroline barely had time to scream before she was pulled back into the shadows. Men and monsters, pulling her back and forcing the ring back on to her finger. 

She didn’t know any of them, but she knew who had sent them, why they were there. 

“Klaus sent you,” She laughed on the ground. 

There were four of them. Surrounding her, looking down on her, a look of fear on their faces. 

“Our mission is to keep you safe.” One of them had told her. 

“Whether I like it or not.” Caroline shook her head. She laughed again and the men just looked confused. 

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” She told them, “I just wanted to see what you would do if I was the threat.” 

“We’re to protect you, no matter what the danger.” 

“Oh, I know.” Caroline said. “And I’m sorry for that.” 

The first two were easy to take down, she had their necks snapped before they even realized she was off the ground. The second two were harder, older than her, and they put up a fight. But they were in a forest and wood wasn’t hard to find. She didn’t kill them, but wooden stakes still did plenty of damage even if they didn’t go through the heart. 

Caroline pinned them to the forest floor with them instead. 

See the thing was they couldn’t really hurt her. They weren’t allowed. And that gave Caroline the upper hand. 

 

\--

 

She stared at the paper Rebekah had given her a long time. 

There was an unusual and unexplainable urge to call Elijah but she suppresses it, Elena and Katherine’s words (illusions of her mind) still haunting her after all this time. Rebekah’s encouragement that he would help, didn’t reassure her the way she once would have hoped it would. 

She stares at the witch’s number a long time before she calls. 

Her name was Gretel and it made her laugh the first time she had seen it. 

“Hello, Gretel?” Caroline asks over the phone line, “I’m a friend of Rebekah Mikaelson. Well, kind of. She said if I had a problem, you might be able to help.” 

“I might.” The voice replies. 

“How much do you know about desiccation spells?” Caroline asks. 

It was time to stop running. 

It was time to be Caroline Forbes again. 

Funny how it was Rebekah of all people that made her realize that.

 

\--

 

Caroline and Stefan are the ones who find Elena. It’s not hard, not really, not when there is a string of bodies to follow. 

They find her in the woods, campers at her feet, their throats torn out and body parts missing. Blood coating her mouth, her hands, her clothes; tears pouring down her cheeks as she rocked herself back and forth. 

“Why didn’t you just let me die?” Elena asked before either of them can say anything, before they can even approach her. 

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Stefan took a step towards her, slow and cautious, like she is a small animal he’s trying to catch. (Only he usually ends up being the one to eat those.) 

“We have a cure.” Caroline’s voice comes out too loud and too harsh and Elena scurries away from them, like they’re there to hurt her. Or maybe she’s afraid she would hurt them. Caroline doesn’t know. 

“We have Klaus’ blood and Damon and Bonnie are at the lab now, they’ll have a cure for you.” Stefan said, he had stopped moving, stopped approaching, “Then this will all be over.” 

“It’ll never be over.” Elena said and she had begun rocking again, her crying getting harder. Caroline wanted to run to her, wanted to envelope her in a hug and promise her it would all be okay. But the blood on her clothes could just as easily be Caroline’s. All it would take is one wrong word and Caroline has always been good at saying the wrong ones. 

“I’ll still have—I still would have killed— _why didn’t you just kill me?_ ” 

“Because we care about you, Elena. This virus, its doing this, not you. You just need to let us help you.” Caroline said. 

Stefan moved to approach Elena again and she didn’t back away. Caroline followed him this time, braver somehow, by pure force of will maybe. 

He pulled the vial of blood out of his pocket and showed it to Elena, “This will help.” He told her, “It’s Klaus’s blood it will cure you of whatever werewolf venom is in your system and it should hold you over until we can get you to Bonnie and Damon.” 

Elena looked at the blood like it was a drug. Like it was everything she had ever wanted. And it was, Caroline thinks, it was what would keep her alive forever. Caroline had been there before. She’s in front of Stefan in a flash, the bottle in her hands, as she sucked the contents dry. 

Her face was distorted. Elena had always been the beautiful one, so very beautiful, with her dark hair and soulful eyes. Caroline had always envied her. But now, her face was distorted, the veins so prominent it turned her into something entirely new. Dark and cold and unfamiliar. 

_Monstrous._

Caroline never though she would consider her friend monstrous before. 

“I need more.” Elena said throwing the bottle down. 

“Elena, you need to calm down.” Stefan said, placating. His hands were where she could see them, no threat to be found. “Just give us a little time—”

“I’ve given you days!” Elena roared. “I’ve given you everything. I’ve…” 

She was crying harder now and Caroline wanted to run to her. She wanted to make it better. But she couldn’t do that. Not without the cure. Not without Bonnie or Damon and what they had found. All she and Stefan could offer was the possibility. 

“Elena…Elena, I promise, it’ll be over soon.” Caroline said, “No more pain. No more…urges.” 

She laughed mockingly. “You’ve been saying that for days.” 

“Elena…” 

Stefan stepped forward, out of the safe zone, and Elena lunged. (Caroline would never know what it was, if it was the hunger, the virus eating her from inside out, or if it was the consequences of being locked away for days by the people who claimed to love her.) She had Stefan by the throat and her teeth clenching down on the first piece of flesh she could reach. 

Caroline had reacted on instinct. Hadn’t thought it entirely through, days spent trying to fix this, to make Elena better, nights spent on guard duty hearing her friend cry and beg her for death and no sleep in between. She hadn’t thought about the consequences. 

She had just wanted to save Stefan. That was all. 

Caroline moved quickly, pulling Stefan away from Elena with enough force to send him flying across the forest floor. Time slowed down in that minute as Elena went from looking at him to Caroline. She remembered her friend’s brown eyes piercing her own.

Time sped up after that, sped up so quickly that sometimes Caroline couldn’t remember what happened exactly. 

She remembered Elena moving and maybe it was towards her. She was never sure. 

She remembered veins and dark eyes and blood coating Elena’s lips. 

She remembered vampires appearing out of nowhere, blocking her from Elena’s grasp, pulling Caroline away as she tried to help her friend. 

Stefan yelled somewhere in the background. 

Elena’s heart fell to ground and a moment later, so did her body. 

Caroline remembers it all in a blur, too quickly and too slowly, and she can’t make sense of it sometimes. But she remembers all of it. 

She wished she didn’t. 

 

\--

 

Gretel lives in Las Vegas and something about it makes Caroline laugh too. She runs her own magic shop, full of things real and fake combined that keep the regular customers and the tourists both coming back. 

She looks older than Caroline, mid-forties maybe, short hair hidden behind a scarf, and long skirts to make her look the part. She looks nothing like Bonnie, is nothing like Bonnie, but there’s something about her, power probably, that makes Caroline think of her friend. 

(Makes her wish she was still there.)

“Rebekah said that you were powerful and that you…could help me.” Caroline says. 

They were in the back room, locked away from prying eyes, and sage filling the air to block out their words. Caroline thinks that maybe Gretel could kill her there and no one would know. She thinks that she’s spent too many years on her own, her only company the ghosts of Originals. 

(Caroline has nightmares about Katherine still. 

About being Katherine. The times change, and it’s her in the fifteenth century looking like a dead girl, her blood that Klaus wants to spill over a stupid rock. 

And Klaus still looks at her the same way, like she is something amazing, like she is the sun, and she is there to save him. But he still bites into her neck every time. He still laps up her blood and performs the ritual and becomes the hybrid he is so desperate to become. 

She looks up at him with dead eyes and he smiles. 

“This is how it was supposed to be.” He tells her.

She wakes up with her neck aching, remembering the pain of his teeth inside her. The feeling takes days to go away.) 

“Rebekah is too kind to me,” Gretel says, her voice accented, “I cannot promise I can do what you require.” 

“On the phone, you said you knew about desiccation spells.” Caroline says, asks, she’s not really sure anymore. All these years and staring Gretel down, a plan in her mind, a dangerous plan, and she feels like she’s human again, uncertain of what’s going on around her. 

“Yes. It is powerful dark magic used to stop a vampire’s heart. Humans as well at times.” Gretel says. 

“And you know how to perform it?” 

There is a long pause, as Gretel appraises her Caroline thinks, tries to make her mind up about her. 

“I have performed it before.” She finally says. 

“I have a plan and for it to work, I’d need you to do again.” Caroline says, “Would you be willing to do that?” 

“For the right price, you’d be surprised what I’m willing to do.” Gretel smiles. 

 

\--

 

Caroline has a plan of course. She had started making it in her mind before she had dialed Gretel’s number, before she had reached for her phone. Then she had started sketching it out on paper. Her mind kept turning and turning, ever the perfectionist, and she was drawing out the plans still on napkins on the plane to Vegas. 

All of it of course hinged on whether Gretel said yes. 

And apparently for the right price, she was Caroline’s new best friend willing to do anything for her. Throwing around Rebekah’s name hurt either, an Original’s presence (seen or unseen) always carrying weight. 

Caroline finally emptied out her jewelry box, sold the jewels and gold, and ended up with more money than she expected. 

Apparently some of the broken hearts she had left behind had loved her more than she thought. 

(She almost feels a little bad for that.) 

Now, it all just depends on getting everything else in order. 

It depends on if she can do what needs to be done. 

If she can really end this. Once and for all. 

 

\--

 

Stefan’s cry of horror echoes around her. 

She thinks she might be screaming too, the tears already pooling in her eyes, but then the world catches up with her and its Caroline that is moving too fast. Snapped necks and ripped out hearts and one vampire missing his head. There is a massacre when she is done, one lying at her feet, and this one Elena did not create. 

Caroline speeds to her friend’s side, to her body, holding Elena to her, mixing the blood she wore with the blood still pooling out of Elena’s chest. 

“I’m sorry,” Caroline whispers into Elena’s ear, “I’m so _so_ sorry. I—”

Her voice breaks and words fail her and all she can do is hold Elena’s body as close to her as possible. 

Stefan moves slowly behind her, this time it’s Caroline that’s the wounded animal he fears will lash out. He drops down beside her, and she looks at him through blurry eyes, 

“She’s dead.” She says like somehow he doesn’t already know, hadn’t seen the same things she had. 

“I know,” He says, tears in his eyes and it makes Caroline’s hold on Elena’s limp body tighten. 

If she was alive, Elena would never let her hold her this close. She’d call it suffocating. That’s what Caroline was, suffocating. 

It’s what Klaus was too and now her friends were paying the price. 

Stefan leans over and Caroline lets her grip lessen just a bit, so he can she Elena’s graying face. 

He reaches over and gently closes Elena’s eyes. 

A sob escapes her throat. 

“Caroline, you have to leave.” His voice is uneven, pain hidden under calm words. 

“I won’t just leave her like this.”

“You don’t have a choice.” 

Caroline had never felt the way she did towards Stefan in that one moment before or years after. Had never truly hated him like she did then. 

“Caroline, I don’t want to hurt you, I just…” His eyes trail to Elena’s dead body and then back to her. 

“Damon will be out for blood when he finds out what happened. He’ll be out for _your_ blood even though this is Klaus’ fault. He’ll want you dead too and he…Caroline, you’ll either end up dead or Damon will when Klaus’s army realizes what he’s doing. Or maybe you’ll both end up dead, I don’t know. I just know you can’t be here when he finds out what happened.” 

“But Bonnie—”

“You need to leave, Caroline,” Stefan says, “Please, I _can’t_ —not you too.” 

She closes her eyes and lets out a sob. Her last sob. And then opens her eyes and carefully passes Elena to Stefan. She kisses her friend’s forehead and then she’s gone, speeding through the forest until she is at the other side of town and finding someone to compel a car from. 

Caroline is on the road and leaving Mystic Falls behind her in less than ten minutes. She wears her best friend’s blood on her shirt and she keeps looking over her shoulder for the things she fears. (Klaus’s army, Damon’s car, herself.) 

She takes her phone out and she wants to call someone so desperately, but she knows she can’t. 

She throws it out the window instead. Hopes it breaks into a million pieces. There would be poetry in that. Or irony. Something. 

Caroline is on the road and leaving Mystic Falls behind her in less than ten minutes. She forces herself not to look behind her and keep driving. 

 

\--

 

It ends in New Orleans, just like she always knew it would one way or another. 

Gretel is on the boarder of Louisiana ready, waiting. Caroline had found someone for her to perform the spell on, even gotten a Gilbert ring for her to use though she’ll never know if Gretel will decide to use it. Even if Caroline does see the other woman again, she won’t ask the question. 

They have a plan in place, each one knowing it will take time before Caroline can play her part in what needs to be done. For Klaus to trust her enough, for him to be the only Original in the house, for everything to be just right. But Gretel was connected to her. 

She would know when the time came. Until then Caroline had her set up in luxury to help with the wait. 

Caroline is wearing in a white lace dress that grazes her thighs and she is the picture of innocence as she raises her hand to knock on the door. 

(She’s had years of practice of being someone she’s not, she can do innocent just as well as she can do dangerous.

She is Beatrice and the Devil both and she will only cause pain.)

Elijah is the one who answers the door and it’s the first time she has ever seen him look surprised. It almost makes her feel special. 

“Caroline,” He breathes and she smiles back at him, remembering New York all those years ago when she had seen him again for the first time since she was eighteen. 

“Hi,” She says, and she puts just enough hint of nervousness in her voice that it’s believable. “I’m—I’m here to see Klaus.” 

“I had imagined.” 

“It’s been a century since I last danced with him,” Caroline says, “Right down to the day. And I’m finally at his door.” 

She hears a chuckle and looks past Elijah and sees Klaus there, looking ever the same, a smirk on his face. 

Her breathing falters for a moment (she forgets how to do it), but her heart beats evenly, and she remembers her role. 

She remembers the girl from Mystic Falls and the smile she wore and the way she looked at Klaus when no one else was around to see her. She remembers the girl from Mystic Falls with blood on her shirt and mud on her boots and her hair in disarray as she clung to her mother’s headstone. She remembers the girl from Mystic Falls and she slips into the role just as easily as she has all the others. 

She smiles, her eyes lowering before looking back at Klaus. 

“So, are you going to invite me in?”


End file.
